Under the Guiltless Sun
by Phoenix Down1
Summary: --Volume II of the Sun series--
1. I

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
A DEDICATION and a FORWARD  
  
"Under the Guiltless Sun" is written for the coolest person I know on the Southern Hemisphere. Her SN is Freya. (I hope I spelt that right.) She has been going through a lot of horrible, hard shit lately, and I know that she really, really enjoyed "Rats in the Sun," so for her- I am making it into a series- in hopes that these stories, will, even for just a little while, get her mind off of things.   
I really enjoyed writing "The Headless Aftermath and Other Rats in the Sun." But right after I finished writing it, it seems that me a lot a couple other people had a long spout of really, really, bad luck. My friend, the one I mentioned, was going through some tough things, and I myself got infected with a nasty string of bacteria that cost me my hearing in my right ear- hopefully it's only temporary. Because of that, I don't have the physical of mental energy to continue writing 'Under the Cosmo Candle.' Instead of writing a whole new plot line and characters, it would be easier for me to just prolong 'Rats in the Sun.' That is what the Sun series is going to be. As far as how many volumes it's going to be, your clue is as good as guess as mine. It's going to be however long it takes to tell the story.  
I hope that it's just as enjoyable for you all as it is to me.  
The end of the Sun series is going to mark the end of my fanfiction writing for a little while.  
As always, I welcome all reviews and e-mails, including flames. (I just take the flames and warm my ass with them.)  
  
Your recovering writer,  
~PD  
  
  
  
  
  
  
PART TWO: Under the Guiltless Sun-   
A follow-up to, "The Headless Aftermath and Other Rats in the Sun"  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
Nanaki saw her in a vision.  
  
He has tasted many things in dreams; but the wonder of her smelt more gorgeous than a sun rise.  
  
Nothing was so beautiful.  
  
She was more lithe than a doe running through the brisk, blue dawn. She was cleaner than the hills. She was beyond poetry.  
  
He closed his golden eyes, and shook his head gently.  
  
Was there even a name for this creature? She was too perfect to be human.   
Her greatest flaw was there was none.  
  
"Oh great ancestors, Seto, Mana-ki, old, great, and powerful Gi tribe, this is your son, One-Who-Speaks-With-Many-Tongues, Nanaki, Grandfather! please, please, tell me the meaning of this vision!" Nanaki prayed deeply to the Cosmo Candle. "Who is she who haunts my dreams nightly?"  
  
~  
  
"Hmm.. hmmm...  
She came in through the window,  
She came in through the sea,  
Oh, with the wind she blow,  
Just to come and see me.  
  
Her eyes were sky blue,  
Her skin white, and her hair gold,  
I gave her my heart, hoping she would be true,  
But like the sea, her soul was cold.  
  
Hmm.. hm.  
Please beware of a woman's way,  
They come to kill.  
Like a passing cloud, they never stay,  
Perhaps it is a sick thrill.  
  
But it is this chase,  
That I love the fun.  
This endless race,  
My quest for love is never done.  
Something evil this way comes."  
  
"Is that true, Vincent?"  
  
"I-hm?" Vincent stopped singing, and lowered his harmonica.  
"Fact is, I didn't even know you were musical." Yuffie lowered her chin to rest upon her arms that were coiled about her knees.  
The camp fire reflected like glass in her tiered eyes.  
  
"Is what true?" He asked in a monotone voice.   
  
"Are you still looking for love?" She grinned like a child, and looked at him.   
  
As he paused to answer, the cackling of the fire laughed and snapped. He simply stared back at her, with a graveyard in his red eyes.  
  
"No." He said flatly. He dropped his eyes to his harmonica, hating it, for he could not play it properly. One needs two sets of hands to play the complexes harmonica well. Sure, one could get the basics out- but it would be nearly impossible without special parts to attach it to your neck to play it one handily and get out the techniques.   
  
"It's just a song, Yuffie. Nothing more." He sniffed. The cool night air smelt of burnt embers and pine trees.  
  
"I know. I know it's just a song. Did you write it? I didn't even know you were musical, really." She curled up beside the fire, resting her head upon her arm.  
  
"Yes. I wrote it. ... And yes, I enjoy music." He turned away, wondering why he felt slightly offended at the conversation. Then, he lowered his eyes to his claw; it prevented him from doing so many things. He resented it- for it was not mechanical. There were five slabs of steel hanging there taunting him- meant to look something like fingers. But they were not him; he could not flex those fingers. It was like a glove with no hand inside.   
  
"What instruments do you play?" She asked offhandedly while yawning.  
  
"Acoustic guitar, bass, classical guitar..." He covered his mouth for a yawn as well, "Harmonica, piano, harpsichord, organ, mandolin, violin- but not very well- viola, I can pretend to play the flute and clarinet..."  
  
Yuffie giggled, "PRETEND?"  
  
"Uh, I don't play them well." He replied in a hidden smile. He dropped his face while grinning, "But I can huff out a few notes on them. I like string instruments."  
  
"And you write music too?" Yuffie asked him while scratching her knee.  
  
"Sure. And the lyrics." He said while beginning to slouch.  
  
"But the piano isn't a string instrument." Yuffie slapped her arm, thinking a bug landed on her.  
  
"Sure it is. There are strings inside. Little hammers hit them, and that's how it makes a sound- to put it simply." He titled his head back, and rested his good arm upon his concave stomach. He spoke while staring into the night star speckled sky.   
  
"That doesn't count." She grunted, not quite grasping the mechanics of a piano.   
  
Vincent replied with a sigh, letting himself become lost in the sea of midnight blue- truly not wanting to waste the effort and argue with Yuffie.  
  
"Vincent?" She lolled her head over and looked at him with half closed eyes.  
He raised his attention to her politely.  
With a soft, sleep drenched voice, she asked, "Will you sing me another song until I fall asleep but with NO harmonica?"  
  
Reluctantly, he complied.  
"Know I am not a star,  
But, know I am not far,  
  
Know that I am a night,  
But know that---..."  
  
~  
  
  
  
Tifa's Diary  
  
August 31, 2005  
  
Dear Diary,  
  
It's been a long time since you and I have talked. Let me just give you the run down since my last entry. Cloud and I have been seeing each other for the past year. After two months of long distance dating, I decided to move in with him. It was just getting too expensive and too hard to keep traveling back and forth on the weekends to see each other.   
The money isn't the problem. Turns out that Cloud has a lot more money than he ever let on- left overs from "The Incident." I quit my job at the day care when I moved in. I really miss those little kids. I even miss the awful smells, believe it or not.   
I miss my friends from Niblehiem. I really, really miss my best friend, Barret. You know, I thought that after I'd move in, that I'd stop missing him. I forgot to tell you, Dear Diary, that Barret told me that he was in love with me. I told him that I had feelings for Cloud. I really, really, hurt him bad.  
And so here I am, I choose love over friendship, but, like, it's just not the same. We don't talk as much anymore- even though we are all on good terms.   
I'm just not as happy as I thought I'd be. That's why I'm writing to you again, Dairy.  
I can't even describe it. I'm lonely. Even with Cloud here. I miss Barret. I miss Marlene. I don't love him like I love Cloud... Or do I? I don't know. I can't picture it, Dairy. I don't know what I want. I don't know WHO I want. Maybe I should be by myself. But I do love Cloud, I DO...  
  
Here is another thing. Promise you won't tell anyone, Dairy. I was almost not going to write this... but... I met this other guy. I knew him from a long time ago, when I lived and worked in Midgar at the 7th Heaven before it was crushed... But I met him again, here is Costa del Sol. His name is Johnny.  
I can't tell Cloud, and of course I won't ACT on anything, but, he sure has grown up. He's sort of cute, red hair, darker skin. Looks like he worked out and got a tan or something. I think his last name is Highwind. Weird, huh? I wonder if they are related. Sins of the father.  
Oh well. I'm going to stop writing like the little schoolgirl that I sometimes am, and go to bed. Good night, Dairy.  
Always and forever yours,  
  
Tifa Lockheart 


	2. II

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
  
From the author of, "An Autobiography of Vincent Valentine,"  
And, "Phantom Wall Devils: An Interview with Sephiroth."  
  
PART TWO: Under the Guiltless Sun- a follow-up to, "The Headless Aftermath and Other Rats in the Sun"  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
"What do you THINK it means, then, Nanaki?" Nanko cracked open the small shell, and crammed the nut into her mouth.  
Chief Nanaki, (whose name meant, One-Who-Speaks-With-Many-Tongues) glanced up at her with his fire filled eyes.  
Then, he lowered his face, and rested his snout upon his red paw.  
"I do not know what these visions mean. But I do know that the woman in them is not a ancestor paying me well-wishes. I have a bad feeling that these visions are ill omens."  
  
Nanko glanced to Dayte. Dayte lowered his head.   
"Dayte," Nanko said sternly. "Go find your husband."   
Dayte lifted his face defiantly, then understood.  
  
Nanko wanted to be alone with her new chief husband.  
  
Dayte stood, tossed his long black hair over his shoulders, and walked away like a well pampered woman. It was well known among the tribe that Dayte saw himself as female; he wanted to live as a woman, for he believed that the gods and goddess had made him that way.  
Thus, the tribe respected him and the wishes of the gods and goddess, and they found Dayte a man who wanted a man for a wife.   
  
Nanko was Dayte's best friend, and Red 13's wife.  
  
Nanko was a very young woman, not much older than fifteen, but wise beyond even her own understanding. To a point, it was an arranged marriage between her and Nanaki- for the Gi tribe believed that it was the gods that choose who were to be wed together.   
But it was also true that Nanaki and Nanko loved and respected each other deeply.  
  
As chief, Nanaki was to be wise, calm, and always show good judgment.  
For the last three weeks, he has been plagued with dreams of a woman who was too perfect to be human, but too evil to be a god or goddess.  
Nanaki saw it as a bad omen, and does not know weather or not to tell the tribe about it.  
  
Nanaki glanced over the horizon of his furry paw, watching Dayte saunter off.  
"I think... I think it means that our crops could be bad this year. I think it means we may be hit by a dust storm. I think it may mean no water in the rivers this summer. I don't know! I know it is bad, wife."  
"Maybe if we re-enact the dream, it won't come true." Nanaki suggested as she cracked open another nut. She glanced at Red 13 with dark, chestnut eyes.  
  
"If we do, it may also guarantee it happening. I can't take that chance." Nanaki lifted his head, and shook the dust from his huge, grown out mane.  
  
"Pray, Nanaki, pray to your grandfather, and to Seto, pray and ask them what to do. Pray to your mother. I don't have all the answers. But, we can't keep ignoring your dreams. It will only anger the gods further. We don't understand what they want, and what they are asking! Who is this woman that haunts my husband, so?!"  
  
Nanko placed her bronze colored hand upon Nanaki's thick mane. She brushed her fingers through his sun bleached, red fur, stroking his head gently.  
Nanaki closed his saffron eyes, trying his best to pray.  
  
Off in the distance, a low rumbling and a flash of angry, hot white lighting flickered it's forked tongue.   
Nanko lifted her head.  
  
Dead, boiling air brushed the braids off of her shoulders.  
  
"Nanko, get inside." Nanaki rose to his feet, and stood on the cliff of the canyon, watching the lighting snap in the distance.  
  
Nanko rushed to find Dayte and his husband and get indoors.  
  
"Something... something.. evil, this way comes." Red 13 whispered.  
A raindrop splashed upon his nose.  
  
~  
  
  
Vincent and Yuffie huddled together inside a cramped, muddy, foxhole.  
Yuffie shuddered and bit her lip while cursing quietly.  
Vincent simply kept his head down and sulked while the rain beat the Earth to a liquid pulp.  
  
"S...S...so COLD! GOD! I hate the rain!"  
"Shh. It will be over soon."  
"Sss..so, are you- g-goin' back to the... Niblehiem?"  
"Yes. I have every intention of doing-" A gale gust of wind cut off his words in a shirking hiss.  
  
"WHY?!" Yuffie screamed above the wind and rain as she huddled closer to him.  
"Because I have no where else to GO!" He yelled back.  
  
Vincent's hair and cape whipped about the wind. Upturned handfuls of dirt smattered against his face. Branches of trees crashed down near the frozen, frightened two.  
  
"What a storm! HA!" Yuffie leered out of the foxhole and spat into the wind.  
"You can't kill us! Stupid STORM!"   
  
As if in response, the metal, sheering wind dragged a small stick across her cheek, splitting her skin in two.  
The sound a puppy makes when someone steps upon it's tale jumped out of her throat.  
  
Vincent grabbed her wrist, and forced her down the empty foxhole even further.  
"Don't be stupid and tempt fate, Yuffie. I would have thought that you KNEW that by now!" He scolded her cooly. He glanced up.  
  
Rain continued to fall in armies, beating down the grass, and firing their cannons into the wind.  
  
"So... your going back to the mansion once we get back to Niblehiem?" Yuffie asked weakly while rubbing her bleeding cheek.  
  
"Yes." He replied with a sigh. The, with his good hand, he tore a segment of cloth from his cape, and pressed it against her cheek.  
As he did so, he didn't look at her in the eyes.  
  
"I thought you hated me, Vincent."   
Her voice deepened as she spoke; it was not the voice of a little girl, but of a young twenty something woman.  
  
His eyes, the color of the dried blood upon the cape cloth, shot to her. Their faces were barely a thumbs space apart; their breath coiled around each other in misty fog.  
  
"I don't hate you, Yuffie." He replied softly into her ear as he continued cleaning her wound.  
  
"Then, what DO you feel...?" She asked in a sensual whisper.   
Her eyes began to close into long slits upon her pale, cold face.  
He was well aware of the close proximity their bodies were in.  
  
He was well aware of the offering tilt she gave to her neck.  
He was well aware that her full set of breasts were there hear his hands.  
He was well aware of her pheromones weakening him. Her feminine smells gently pulling as his every fiber. Her full lips begging, pleading... wanting.  
He was well aware that it had been so many years since he really touched a woman, let alone kiss one. He wasn't sure that he could do it right anymore.  
  
He was also aware that deep down, past his human desires, that he wasn't going to do a thing to Yuffie.  
  
"I don't feel anything, Yuffie. Not anymore." He replied quietly.  
  
He stopped dabbing the blood from her cheek.  
She opened her eyes, and looked at him in shock.  
  
No man/boy has turned down the offer to kiss her before. She not only offered, she BLATENTLY SHOVED the opportunity to him. All that was missing was the neon green sign that said, "PLEASE kiss ME!" plastered to her forehead.  
  
She wondered if he REALLY WASN'T human under all that cold exterior.  
But he was sooo sexy. Why didn't she see it when she was 16?  
She thought he was an evil, cold, prick then.  
Not anymore. Now he is tall, dark, and handsome.  
  
And so sweet. He was whipping away the blood from her cheek. He really does care. When, why doesn't he kiss her?  
  
"Vincent?" She asked in the voice that was more of an adult woman's.  
  
"What?" He asked as he glanced out of the cold, muddy foxhole. He was beginning to worry that the thin layer of dirt that separated them from the outside was beginning to ware away.  
  
"Why don't you kiss me?" She asked as she began to tangle her fingers into his thick, black, matted, hair.  
  
"Yuffie. Look. We got to get out of this hole, the storm is warping it away. We got to find a stone cave or something. Or a town with a vacancy."   
  
"Aw. Why?" Yuffie took her fingers from her hair, and found herself coming back to the dampness of reality. Her cheek hurt. She was cold and dirty. The storm outside was violent. Vincent seemed unusually uptight and anxiety filled.  
  
With a strong, one armed shove, Vincent pulled himself out of the foxhole. He held onto a tree root and tugged his thin frame out.  
  
As the rain began to dump itself onto him, Yuffie looked up from the hole, and saw just how frail his body was.  
  
His clothes hugged every inch of his skin. The hair that was normally thick and long, looked like long black ropes dangling on his back. Everything about him melted under the pelting, vicious rain.   
The claw seemed to be the widest thing on him.  
  
He held out his good hand to her. As she took it, she saw him in a new light; she saw him with the eyes of a adult.  
He was neither sexy, strong, mysterious, nor handsome. He was afraid, frail, troubled, and lost. The rain ripped it all from him, even his demure.  
He was pale. His face was narrow and sunken in. His eyes were long- like a creature's. A cat, maybe- but ruddy brown. Almost red.  
...There was something in-human and ugly about him.  
Downright hideous, but not exactly in his face...  
  
Perhaps it wasn't just the rain, Yuffie thought. Perhaps she was beginning to grow up. She was seeing him for who and what he really is.  
Instead of running through the rain, scattered and afraid of it, Yuffie and Vincent walked hand in hand.  
  
As Vincent held her hand, and felt not the slightest tremble from her, he realized that she was not afraid of getting muddy, or of thunder.  
He realized that she was no longer a child.  
Perhaps he should have kissed her- he thought- not because he was attracted to her- but to show her that he acknowledged her adulthood.  
  
Maybe she would have interpreted that wrong...  
  
Vincent sighed. This was odd. He thought that since "The Incident" Cid was the closest to him. It was not so anymore. He could not write off this brother/sister bond he was accidentally growing with Yuffie.   
  
"So, we are going back to Niblehiem!?" Yuffie stopped and yelled, trying to get her voice above the bulbous, round, sounds of thunder.   
  
"Uh," Vincent hesitated. "Maybe. Yeah, let's head that way, ok?!"   
He took her hand once more.  
  
Together they tromped through the mud and heavy, silver rain.   
Yuffie whistled 'Someday My Prince Will Come,' the whole way.  
Vincent didn't stop her. Even when she was completely out of key.  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Diary  
  
September 9, 2005  
  
Dear Dairy  
  
Horrible, horrible rain outside. Sorry I haven't been writing to you every day like I promised. Just like me, huh, breaking promises. Oh well, can't be TOO hard on yourself, you know? Gets you... nowhere. Cloud taught me that.  
Cloud when grocery shopping today.  
When he left, I called Johnny.  
Hey, don't blame me, I was lonely, and no, it wasn't a DATE.  
We just went out for lunch.  
You know, when you move out into a new city, they don't tell you this, but, it's really, really, hard making new friends. I mean, Cloud has friends here, and I LIKE his friends, I just want some of my own, you know? And, I don't know where to begin. I don't know where all the coffee houses and the clubs and the discos are. But I know Johnny. I think he is Cid's son. Weird, huh?  
It was a short, uh, get-together.  
I ate a turkey sandwich, and an iced tea, he had a salad and soda.   
He asked me if I was seeing anyone.   
I told him, well, it popped out of my mouth.  
It was the first thing I could think of.  
I said, 'no,' ok!  
We just talked a little bit after that. I told him I moved out here with a friend. I told him that I wanted to meet people. It was all true. I didn't really lie. Cloud IS a friend.  
Then, it began to rain, really, really, hard. POURING downfall rain!  
He took me home. (We got there before Cloud did.)  
I let him dry off.  
  
I didn't know where Cloud was, because after Johnny left, the phone rang. It was Barret. We did some small talk. It was raining over there, too. He said that the newscaster said, (Me and Cloud don't have TV) that it was raining really bad in almost every major city. Weird. He was hoping that me and Cloud were ok. I said we were, we still had power and everything. Barret and Marlene were doing ok, too.   
  
After we talked for a little while, I hung up the phone, and Cloud came home. That's it. That was my day. Cloud is in the shower right now. We are getting ready for bed. Do I have a crush on Johnny, now? I don't know. I'm supposed to call him tomorrow. I'm so confused.   
  
Gotta go, Cloud is out of the bath.  
Love,  
  
Tifa Lockheart 


	3. III

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
Tifa's Diary  
  
August 13, 2005  
  
Dear Dairy,  
  
  
I'm sorry. There are splotches and my tears may make spots on t ages. Something horrib appened C oud and I got into a really, really bad fight.   
  
I guess I should start from the beginning. Jo hnny came o ver because I called him. I was feeling really, really bad. He c ame o er and we had a few drinks. And then Cloud came over. He was with Barret.   
  
Oh my god, it was awkward, but Cloud didn't want to make a scene. Cloud thought that he recognized Johnny from several yea s go.   
Cloud wanted to know who Johnny was and what he was doing. Barret didn't s y a ny thing.   
Johnny got up. He was so embarras s ed. He was like,  
"Nothing was going on! I sw ear that I didn't tou ch er."  
  
Then Johnny ran out of the Villa. Barret was still silent and Cloud wanted to know what was going on. I told him that we were just friends and that nothing was going on between Johnny and I.  
But that's not completely true, Diary, Johnny and I kissed a few days ago.  
  
I wanted to kn ow what Ba rret was doing there with Cloud. Cloud said it was going to be a sur rise. Barret and Marlene needed a vacation and Cloud invited them over.   
You should have seen the way Barret looked at me w n this whole thing happened. He ga ve me the look of loathing. He prob ebly thinks that I' a di rty slut now. He didn't talk to me the whole time he and Marlene were here.  
  
I'm at Johnny's right now. Barret and Marlene are leaving the Villa to go back to Kalm today. Cloud said that when they leave he wants to talk to me, until then, I'm supposed to stay here with Johnny.   
Marline's gotten so big and so pretty. She is like, eleven now. She looks much older than that.  
Diary, I don't know what going on. A few weeks ago, everything was fine, it was like, perfect, and now everything is topsy-turvy. It was me, Cloud, and a beach paradise. I don't know where Johnny came from. I don't know how I feel about him. I think I just lost my closest friend and my boy-friend because of a fling. I don't know. I'm lonely, and confused. Sometimes I feel that Cloud doesn't even love me. Now I know that he doesn't trust me. He has eve r y r e a s o n n o t to tru ss t me.  
  
Sorry. Uhm. That got all runny. I'm crying now. Not just crying, but, bleeding clear weeps from my eyes. I do this to myself, you know? I think I crave and create chaos for myself. Cloud once told me that I thrived on it. I hope he learns to love me for this huge flaw, and takes me back.  
God I love him, lord knows I NEED him. Especially now.  
And I'm so sorry. God, I'm sorry for what I did!  
  
I'm sitting outside Johnny's apartment in Costa del Sol right now. I'm sitting on his wooden, green balcony. The air is dying. It's so dark out- but it is not night. Police sirens.  
He lives quite a few miles from Cloud. He moved here from Midgar two years ago. He lives in the sort of, 'iffy' areas. I mean, there are gang fights and the streets aren't clean and half of the houses around here are abandoned and there are a lot of strip clubs around. But I know I'm safe. Cloud lives in the downtown area. Everything is much nicer there.  
It's so hot in Costa del Sol. But I like the palm trees.  
For the past few days the weather has been really, really weird. It looks like a hurricane is coming but it doesn't. It's usually sunny all the time here, but, for the last, like, week, it has been dark. Every day, the sky is black, and there is lighting, big- BRIGHT lightening on the horizon.  
It scares me.  
Sometimes it rains, POURS, then, it stops.  
I feel like something evil is headed this way.  
I'm scar ed.  
  
Desperat e ly yours,  
  
Tifa Lockheart  
  
~  
  
  
"Where to...?"  
"Just get me away from here, will ya? Far away. Out of the city."  
"It's gunna costa ya..."  
"I don't care." Tseng muttered as he slammed the cab door.  
  
He glanced to the cab driver's ID that was hooked on the back of the seat.  
The photo was of a bald, dark man in sunglasses and a red fez.  
It was a photo of Rude.  
Beside the picture was the name, "Mohammed Al Bazaar"  
  
"You got the 'Bazaar' part down pact." Tseng chuckled as he looked into the rear-view mirror.  
"Huh?" The cab driver glanced back.  
  
"Tseng...?" Rude asked quietly. He was always a man of few words.   
"Rude. I can't believe you. A Midgar CAB DRIVER?! Couldn't you do any better?"   
  
Rude didn't respond. He turned the cab left. He was a careful driver. But he liked to drive fast. He felt like he owned the road that way.  
  
"It was total coincidence that I ran into you, Rude. No one else knows that I'm even alive. I killed Reeve, you know. And since then, I am now at peace. I'm thinking of finding Elena and hooking back up with her. Any clues as to where I can find her?" Tseng asked as he adjusted his tie.   
  
Rude turned right on red. He responded with silence.  
  
"Ever talk to Reno?" Tseng began to feel uncomfortable. He remembered Rude being of few words, but he never spoke with him one on one. Reno was always there with them. Reno often got Rude to talk.  
  
"Nope." Rude replied as he continued to drive.  
  
"I hate to admit this..." Tseng began to babble uncomfortably, "But I miss the Turks. I suffered nerve damage, you know, from the Temple of Ancient's collapse. I can't move my arm at all."  
  
Rude gave no indication of either listening, or not listening. He simply drove.  
  
"Maybe we can all get together sometime, huh? What do you think of that?" Tseng leaned in slightly, resting his hand upon the back of the passenger's seat.  
  
Rude turned left again.  
  
"Hey, Rude?" Tseng leaned into the back seat, and pointed out into the sky.  
  
"See that big light out there on the horizon?"  
"Yeah..." Rude grunted as he looked out the windshield; he titled his sunglasses ever so slightly to see.  
  
"Take me there." Tseng let a silk smile to his lips.  
  
"You're the boss, boss." Rude shifted gear, and drove toward the lightning on the horizon.  
  
  
~  
  
  
Nanko held the radio carefully in her hands. She tilted it one way.  
Static.  
She titled it another way.  
  
Even fuzzier static.  
  
"Stupid technology! Gast said that it would make life EASIER!"  
"Nanko, your not doing it right! Move the silver wire thing!" Dayte took the radio from Nanko's dark, delicate hands, and wiggled the aerial around.   
  
Nanko and Dayte stood inside the Cosmo Canyon pub. Only half a dozen customers remained inside with them.  
The neon 'open' sign was shut off.  
The small, hushed conversations were short and clipped.  
Everyone seemed to be worried about the gods- and about the weather that was slowly crawling towards them. Were the gods and goddess angry with them?  
  
The pub's owner did not mind the chief's wife and her friend staying inside with them. They welcomed anyone whom sought shelter. That was the way of their people.  
  
Dayte placed the radio down upon the bar, and moved the long, bent aerial once more. A weather/ news broadcast seemed to be hissing in through the steel grate.  
  
"Fzzz HHhh Tzzz Hi! This is Cory MacDonald, and I am he-FzzTzzz.. weather for today. Cloudy across the nations. Rain and thunderstorm expected across the Canyon THHHFFFzzzz -egion. Midgar area. Expected to be cloudy as well. Thunder storm warning across the nations. Strange weather we are having, eh, Chuck? Just where is tttFFFFFZZZZZZZZ..."  
  
"Dangit! Dayte, you almost had it working! Said thunderstorm was to be expected!" Nanko Crunched up her small nose.  
  
"Shh! They were about to talk about that lightening front! I'll get it working again!" Dayte's masculine hands shook the radio.  
  
"Tttttzzz Blipt! Fffff...ttzzzz... Lightening front we are having! It's a mystery to me, Cory! No weatherman has yet been able to explain what the anomaly in the sky is- or where it is going. I suppose we all have to wait and see, Cory."  
  
Dayte and Nanko stood with their ears pressed against the radio. Little did they realize that the rest of the pub was completely silent as well.  
  
"Ooooh, Scary stuff, Chuck. Has there been investigations yet in the matter?" Cory-the-weathergirl-on-the-radio asked in a professional voice. Chuck-the-weatherman-on-the-radio, responded in exactly the same manner. "As a matter of fact there has, Cory. Cid Highwind, the same Cid Highwind- hero of the Sephiroth Incident, has agreed to take 'The Tiny Bronco' out... FffTTTZzzzz... Shin-Ra president, Dante Julius' blessings. The new weather invention attached to 'The Tiny Bronco' is supposed to give us a little more insight on what exactly is... FFttttzzzz..."  
  
Nanko backed away from the radio. Dayte turned and looked at her.  
Dayte's face, although it was a man's face, was gentle and curvy. His cheeks were round, and his countenance was soft and dark.   
His eyes were two small pools of night sky, delicately trailing Nanko's worried features.  
  
Nanko's young face was the color of copper; her brow was a map of rivered stress.   
Dayte placed his thick hand upon her small shoulder.   
"Isn't Cid Highwind a friend of your husband's?" He asked in a whisper.  
"Yes." Nanko bit her pink, tiny lip. "I met him once. We have to go tell Nanaki."  
  
Dayte bent down slightly. The beads upon his bare chest clapped together. "We will tell him together." Dayte smiled quietly, and together they walked out of the dark, wooden pub.  
  
Every pair of eye in the bar was plastered to their backs as they walked away.  
  
The weather outside seemed somehow old, heavy, and unkind. There were huge blasts of wind that could lift a cow off of her hooves. Then, a moment later, the wind would be as silent as a still puddle.  
"Where is Nanaki!?" Dayte yelled.  
  
Nanko turned to him.  
  
Dayte was nearly forty. Nanko was barely sixteen.  
Sometimes she felt so much, much, older than him.  
  
"I'll find him! He's probably at home. Dayte, go find your husband! Go inside! I'll be fine!" Nanko found herself telling Dayte to 'go find your husband' nearly ten times a day.  
  
Dayte hesitated, nibbled his thin, long lip, then turned to run inside. She could tell that he was horrified by the growing, bright-darkness coming upon them.   
  
  
  
~  
  
Yuffie lifted her round, pale face.  
"Oh. Holy. Crap." She muttered as she looked into the sky. "What IS that?!"   
High above them, the sky turned a mossy teal. White lights flashed and danced, as if the northern lights escaped the cage of night.  
The stars began to fall, as if they were sand tumbling free from an hour glass. They spider webbed and zigzagged in intricate tangos and waltzes.   
"Vincent!" Yuffie gasped as she clung to him, shaking. "What's going on?!"  
  
Vincent simply gawked with his eyes wide open. "I... don't... know."  
  
There they stood side by side, in a field sprinkled with a few pine trees, letting a monstrous wind rush over them. Lightening forked, split, and stretched out like a mighty electric claw in the sky above.  
  
The lightning was like monsters, horrifically beautiful creatures moving in herds beyond the land. The blue roof above seemed to be flashing bright colors across the rainbow spectrum.  
  
Yuffie slid to her knees in fear. Vincent came to his senses.   
"Yuffie!" He snapped. "Don't stand near the trees! Lay flat or find a ditch! That's lightening! THAT'S LIGHTENING!"  
She didn't argue.  
  
Yuffie lay completely flat on her stomach as the thick wind carried the creatures across the sky in a brightly lit, circus parade march.  
  
Vincent fell to his stomach beside her, cradling her head in his good arm.  
They huddled together, trembling under the gale force of the wind.  
  
The lighting curled into shapes, stretching out in arms of deadly waves. Rolls of thunder roared on the horizon. It sounded as if something exceedingly heavy dropped and echoed across the fields.  
  
Quietly, the wind slowed.  
  
The flashes become mere flickers on the horizon. Yuffie lifted her head, pushing Vincent's arm off of her.  
"What... happened?" She asked dizzily.  
  
"I have a bad feeling about this." Vincent uttered between his teeth.  
She shot a look at him.  
  
"'You have a bad feeling about this'??? Wh-What the FUCK, Vincent! Did you see what just HAPPENED! And all you have to say, is- 'I have a bad feeling about this?!'"  
  
Vincent rose to his feet, and dusted the grass off of his pants.  
Yuffie leapt up and began treading behind Vincent as he started to walk away.  
  
"What the hell!? Do you know something that I don't know! TELL ME! VINCENT! I thought we TRUSTED each other! VIIIINCENT!" Yuffie's lips curled into a pout. Her forehead crinkled like an upset ball of paper.  
She angrily pushed a lock of brown hair behind her ear.  
  
Vincent stopped. He turned around.  
"You remember the bit with the Shin-Ra mansion a few weeks ago?"  
  
Yuffie rolled her eyes and placed her hands upon her hips. "How could I FORGET! I saw you with no pants on."  
  
"Well. I don't think that this is over. I think Ray is still searching for the remainder of the Jenova creature. I think Ray knows where to find it. And I think that Ray found the monster lair that holds it." Vincent finished and began walking forward again.  
  
"I don't understand." Yuffie exclaimed as she ran to his side, trying to keep up with him.  
  
"Did you see those lighting creatures?" Vincent pointed to the sky as he walked.  
  
"Yeah." Yuffie lifted her head, trying to follow.  
  
"They were coming from the north. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, the Promised Land is a logical place to bring the remains of a sacred Jenova creature to the monsters. And a good hiding place for a lair. Now, we know the basement of the Shin-Ra mansion was also a sacred place for monster's organizations. But, that was abandoned, was it not?" Vincent continued as he walked.  
  
"I think I see what you are saying. But, what are we going to do about it? And what WERE those creatures?" Yuffie asked, slowly fathoming Vincent's theory.  
  
"I frankly don't know, and don't care. Like I said, it was just an idea. And, nothing. I plan to go home. My mansion is no longer in threat to being knocked down." Yuffie turned and glared at Vincent's flat words.  
  
"You sure seem to know a lot about these monsters and what's going on for someone who really doesn't care, Vincent!" Yuffie barked.  
  
"Don't talk to me like that, Yuffie." Vincent retorted back.  
  
"Well, I want to DO something about this before someone gets hurt!" Yuffie spoke in short, clipped, bitter, snaps.  
  
"Well, then, GO! The creatures headed THAT way. I'M going to NIBLEHIEM!" Vincent countered coldly, and continued walking.  
  
Yuffie turned around, and began walking the way they came without looking back. 


	4. IV

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
The House That Nobody Lives In  
(As written and sung by Vincent Valentine on classical guitar)  
  
There is a house in my heart  
That nobody lives in  
Nobody at all.  
  
It withstands the cold nights,  
The bloodlusting vampires,  
And the lack of light  
  
But it can't withstand your words  
Your senseless acts of forgetfulness  
And these lonely dreams of love  
  
The house that nobody lives in  
Lives in my soul  
It lives beside the hole,  
That weeps all the blood from my veins  
  
...And I try to contain,  
This despair that I disdain,  
  
And I try!  
I...  
Try...  
Not to cry.  
  
You say you will  
But you don't.  
You say that you will try,  
But you can't.  
  
And it's this house that we live in that suffers most.  
This house that you and I met and grew.  
This house that our relationship  
Drew.  
  
It's this house that nobody lives in,  
That weeps a thousand oceans more,  
It's this house that nobody lives in,  
That bleeds a thousand lonely score,  
It's this house,  
That nobody lives in,  
That doesn't turn on the light,  
  
To the empty outside night.  
  
  
~  
  
Far in the distance of the North, energy, Jenova cells, and the remains of Aeris were being gathered by creatures unspeakable.  
They were going to re-create a Sephiroth clone.  
But not just any sort of Sephiroth clone.  
It would have Aeris' DNA and RNA as well.  
  
It would be like them; a monster. Powerful. Wise. A Cetra descendent.  
They lacked Sephiroth's real cells- but Jenova would do.  
  
Monsters were underrated by the human race. These creatures have been upon the Earth as long as insects; they had been here much longer than humans. They were by far more sophisticated and complex than human society.  
The creature that they would create would level the playing field- or so they hoped.  
Monsters have learned to exist in not only the material world like humans- but in the dream world- the world of children's nightmares, the spirit world where daemons inhabit, and heaven.  
By the grace of their gods they hoped to create their Messiah. They knew of Aeris long before she was even born. The monsters of this Earth knew well of her powers long before she died.  
They wanted her, or parts of her, to be theirs.  
  
They would travel to the Promised Land to find her body.  
They already had Jenova. They stored Jenova in the Shin-Ra basement for a while until a man named Ray, an explorer and entrepreneur, had partially uncovered their plan.  
  
He was one of the few humans whom knew about the monster secret culture.  
  
They quickly removed Jenova before the found it indefinitely.  
  
It was true that there were some uncultured, beastly monsters without much of a brain in their skull- but there were plenty that are for more sophisticated, intelligent, and learned than even the highest human college graduate.  
Some of these creatures are thousands of years old.  
  
Such monsters like this were vampires.  
  
  
  
  
"I don't care. I don't see how YOU care. They are humans, not even Cetra descendent- they mean nothing, Eve. Let them come. They won't find us. And they won't even fathom what we are about to do. This is far greater and far more controlled than their petty Sephiroth project. The one called Gast, I give him credit, he was a brilliant scientist, he created many things, he created Sephiroth, but we creatures have many things up on him in our favor. For one, years. YEARS. We are far older and more knowledgeable on the areas of cloning. I scoff at the fact that you fear that the human called 'Ray' will find us."  
  
"There are more than Ray now. You don't understand. Our lookout sentries saw them, heard them, they are coming to the Promised Land. They saw the lightening and are following it."   
  
The creature gestured his delicate hand at Eve, and raised a long eyebrow, "You are amusing me. Just how many ARE there coming, and WHERE are they now?"  
  
"They were in a car. A spy overheard them in the city. They still are in the city. They were chasing the lighting."  
  
"Let them case it. No human can keep up with Blitz Sprites. I still want to find out WHO let them out in the first place. That was the worst mistake ANYONE had ever made- letting them accidentally out on their own."  
  
"It was a halfling that let the lightening sprites out. And he was severely punished, sir."   
  
"Good." The man stood, and folded his hands behind his back. He walked forward in a fluid, dance-like movement, as if his feet did not touch the cold ground at all.   
  
The two vampire-like creatures, (the woman, Eve, as she was called, was only half vampire,) stood in the damn underground laboratory. Around them were hundreds of neon green tubes filled with fluid. They emitted a sick, yellowish glow that reflected off of Eve's paler-than-seashell face.  
Eve's eyes were wide, round and large. They were like two huge tulip blossoms turned on their side upon her moon countenance; but they were the color of smooth honey-fanned with lashes the color of sand. Her hair was short cropped and blonde. Her lips were a soft pink. She wore an outfit entirely made of skinned cobras.  
  
"Why are you so cold to me today, Tel?" She let a serpentine smile slither up her face. Then, she rested her nails upon her lips.  
She pulled a chair out from under a knee-hole of a desk, and rested her boot upon the seat's edge.  
She wore fish-net stockings that crawled up and captured her thick white thighs.  
  
"First off, don't call me 'Tel.' And who said I was being cold?" He turned to her.  
  
The man's skin was as black as a wet stone. His long narrow eyes, too, were simply two wide and shiny almond shapes in his head.  
He had eyes as endless as an eagle's.  
His hair fell down his back in a waterfall of darkness.  
Round were his lips, but they were also the color of obsidian.  
He wore a simple white shirt and a long, knit, black sweater over it.  
He also wore simple blue jeans and a belt.  
  
"You are. And I'm not calling you that stupid name everyone else calls you." Eve dropped her foot off the chair and approached him. "I know better." She whispered as she wrapped her arms about his neck. He didn't reply or respond.  
  
"I HATE your eyes. I can never tell if your looking and paying attention to me or not! Or even LISTENING! God! Look at you..." She laid her head upon the crevasse between his neck and shoulder. Then, she inhaled a deep, long breath. "But your eyes are like two patches of night's sky. Do you remember what everyone called you when we first met?" She asked softly.  
  
He lowered his face, letting his coal black hair fall in front of his face. It dangled, playing spider legged shadows upon his features. The sodium light from the tubes wove images upon the wall.  
  
"We have had so many names. We live so long, we have to make so many identities. I have been everyone. Now, I wish to be no one at all. That's why you can't call me 'Tel' anymore. I am no longer he, Eve. I do not call you, 'Lillith,' now do I?"  
  
"No, you don't." She pressed her face into him. Her voice was muffled into his shirt.  
  
"Today, I am Stygian. Yesterday, I was 'Teleute.' Tomorrow, who knows?! I may call myself, 'Orpheus' or even, 'Charron!'" He looked down at her seriously.  
  
She was laughing. His shirt kept her muffled.  
  
"Why are you laughing at me?"  
  
Her body shook violently. She slowly rose her achromanticistic face,  
"You pick the STUPIDEST names! Why don't you pick something normal, like, Pete, or something, like the other vampires!?"  
  
Stygian pushed her forcefully away. He lowered his face; inclemency in his eyes rose in raging ice.   
"I am one of the OLDEST! I am not a young, impudent fool like yourself. You slut. I am knowledgeable and well versed in all forms of ancient and modern wisdom on this planet. Names have MEANING. Names have POWER. I, unlike you and those like you, choose my names CAREFULLY. Sephiroth was named Sephiroth for a REASON!" His voice reverberated off the glass tubes in the otherwise silent lab.  
  
"You.. you black freak!" Eve's lips parted and trembled with fear. She was, for a damphire, very, very young.  
  
"You are no longer welcome in his lab, Eve. Just. Go." He lifted his long finger and pointed to the door behind him.  
  
"Your kicking me off of the research team?" She asked while grabbing her jacket off of a lab table.  
  
"Yes. Just. Go. I don't want to see your face anymore." He pushed his long, black hair behind his shoulder carelessly.  
  
"Your so fucking dramatic. Fucking drama queen. I should have never gotten sexually involved with you. I knew something like this would happen." She hissed as she took her purse off of a hook. "Shit like this happened to every other fucking girl you got involved with. You can't even keep a relationship. Fucking. You fucking man-whore. You sleep with them, and then kick them off of your research team. Fine! I don't want to be a part of the project anymore, anyway! Good luck replacing a genome specialist like ME! You won't find one as competent as I am, Dr. Stygian!" She approached the door and swung it open so harshly, it left a dent on the wall.  
  
"Eve! Listen! Just listen for one SECOND!" Dr. Stygian turned to and spoke softly, "Listen, I'm sorry for calling you a slut. I KNOW that you're a smart woman. Your one of the smartest women I have EVER known. And I do want you on the team- I... I take it back. I think we NEED you. Look." Stygian turned, and pointed to one of the neon colored tubes that noiselessly listened to their every word.  
  
In each and every one of the tubes, a human fetus bobbed up and down, suspended in the liquid.  
  
"They are growing. The Aeris/Jenova clones are growing. Only one of them will grow to full size."  
  
"Jesus. They are." Eve dropped her purse onto the floor. The laboratory door began to slide shut, but her purse blocked it from closing.  
  
"Look at this one. It seems to be growing at a terrific rate! Holy cow. I have never seen anything like this, Dr. Stygian, could you send this one out onto a smaller tube, or even a peetree dish? That might work. I want to get a better look at it's cellular structure to make sure it's still stabilizing well." Eve slid out a pair of small silver spectacles from her jacket pocket and slid them onto her face.  
  
Dr. Stygian nodded and went to the control panel in the back corner. He tapped a few keys quickly and skillfully. As he did so, one of the fetus in the tubes shut upwards, slid through a long tubular canal, and landed into a much smaller test tube.  
  
Eve took the smaller tube, and inspected it carefully. The liquid that the infant floated in was clear like water.  
  
"Well, at this rate, in a few moment this child won't fit in the tube. I don't have a lot of time." She said as she swiftly slid the tube under a specialized microscope. She turned the scope on, and inspected it carefully.  
  
When she looked into the eyepiece, she saw millions of round-blob like cell structures, dancing, dividing, and looking very fine and alive indeed.   
  
"Stygian. You won't believe this. I think we have THE ONE! This is the Aeris with Jenova cells that might grow up to adult size. This is so fucking fascinating. Come take a look at it. The cells are performing mitosis perfectly. No mutations! I got to put it back into the larger tube before it gets too cramped. Stygian! ... Stygian?"  
As Eve removed the tube from the microscope, she turned and looked at Dr. Stygian.   
  
There in the corner, the dark Dr. Stygian was huddled. He clutched the control panel with slippery, sweaty hands.  
His breath was short.  
  
Eve turned and placed the small tube with the growing creature into the shoot- which took the fetus back into the larger, yellowish tubes beside the others.  
  
"It's interesting. Sephiroth, too, grew at a fantastic rate due to the Jenova cells. And all you can do is huddle in the corner and tremble. Well, that's a sensible attitude to have. We have no idea what this person we are growing is going to be like. With the Aeris cells, what if she/he is going to... be on the human side? What if it's disposition to empathize with it's humanity?"   
  
Dr. Stygian slowly began to regain himself. "Don't ask philosophical questions. None of them have answers. The child will be raised properly. Nature verses nurture. Nurture tends to win. Plus, the child will know the history of it's people. He/she will know that it was the humans who took the Earth from the Cetra so many thousands of years ago. It was the humans who took it from us creatures, as well! We lived in harmony with the Cetra- with nature. Humans must conquer nature. They must destroy everything! We are just taking back what is rightfully ours.   
"Aeris, that Cetra, was an idiot. Why she betrayed her people and sided with the humans, I will never know. We are doing what's right. We are bringing her back to give her another chance, to rectify herself- sort to speak.  
But, she was so powerful. Strange one would think the bloodline would have been tainted when she was born from so much in-breeding with the humans. But she was one of the most powerful Cetra to ever live! That's why it's HER we are cloning.   
"Sephiroth was the greatest thing to ever come about. Odd, that it took a human mind to bring about. Sad, really."  
  
Eve looked at him, then to the large test tube before her.  
"You have given this a lot of thought." She said while pushing up her silver glasses. Then, she pulled down her snake-skin dress, as it was riding up her thighs.  
  
He glanced at her, and clutched his chest. He still breathed hoarsely.  
"Yes. I have. I've given this a lot of my time, blood, sweat, and energy, too. Come, Eve, let us find a stupid human and drink. I'm... getting weak."  
  
~  
  
Rude drove and he drove. Then, he stopped.  
"What's the hold up?" Tseng woke himself and asked with a tinge of irritation in his voice.  
Rude didn't reply as he set the cab in park beside the street curb.  
Tseng glanced out the back window.  
  
They were parked outside a dirty, tiered looking pub. It's roof was slightly sunken in, and the garbage that was scattered on the sidewalk in front of the building was nearly as numerous as the rats that dashed two-and-fro.   
Slanted gray shadows and filth colored the faded wood on the building. The pub looked something like a rotten piece of dark fruit, for the peeling paint curled off it's face.  
  
"I need to drink to drive." Rude said in a monotone voice as he slammed the driver's side door.  
  
"What! Don't drink and drive! Rude! Get back here! Numbnuts! God!" Tseng leapt out of the cab and followed him inside.  
  
Tseng was immediately hit by the three pungent smells of cigar smoke, fat man sweat, and cheap piss yellow beer.  
And the sound of country kareoke was the strongest sound.  
A sad overweight cowboy in a goatee and black hat sang with a thick, Southern twang on a neon pink stage.  
Beer advertisement, cut-out stars on a string, and bad lighting hung above him.  
  
A half a dozen men sat on barstools at the counter completely ignored him.  
A waitress with big, bleach blonde hair passed a red lipped smile at the sweaty young man on stage.  
  
  
"...Please don't take my sunshine away. I'll always love you, and make you happy, if you will only stay the same. But if you leave me, and love another, you will regret it all someday. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray, you never know dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away. You told me once dear, you really love me, and no one could come between, but now you left me to love another, you have shattered all of my dreams. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray, you never know dear, how much I love you, so please don't take my sunshine away. In all my dreams, dear, you always seem to leave me, when I awake, my cold heart pains, so why don't you come back, and make me happy, I will forgive dear, take all the blame. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you never know dear, how much I love you, please don't take my sunshine away."  
(You Are My Sunshine. Traditional.)  
  
  
  
Tseng felt odd here. He was in a suit jacket and clean cut tie, and his butt-crack didn't rise above his blue jeans.  
  
He glanced around for Rude.  
He didn't see him.  
Maybe he headed strait for the men's room.  
  
As the song ended, (thankfully) the large man in the cowboy hat waddled off the stage, kicking up some of the neon pink cloth that covered the wooden stage planks.  
Another man in a flannel shirt ambled on, clearing his wide throat to warble out another good-ol'-country-tune.  
  
Tseng headed for the men's room.  
  
"Oh... death, I reckon you stalk. Oh... oh! Death, it's you I know, though I can't see, please just go and leave me be! Oh, death, your ice cold hand, and old bone white face, it's like something familiar that I can't place. Oh, death, oh death! Down that river Styx, though no one can tell, I know that river leads to hell!"   
(A Vincent Valentine original. Phoenix Down records, 2002. Inspired by the song, 'Oh Death' by Ralph Stanley on the 'O brother, Where Art Thou?' Soundtrack)   
  
Tseng glanced over his shoulder as the older man in the flannel shirt began to sing. He was singing without backup music. It was just his syrup, leather voice and the microphone.  
His ancient, cracking voice haunted him.  
  
"Oh, death. Oh, my lord and death! Don't do this to me! Don't let me die and send me to hell, I know that I have not lived my life well. I know that if I die, no one would be there to hear me cry! Oh, lord, I plead for my life, just let me live one more day o' strife. Oh... death, Oh, my dark death... The shadow is upon me, please don't let me die and hear my plea."  
  
As the older man sang, the bar fell silent. Tseng stood there in the hall between the bar and the bathroom. He stood and listened.   
He looked to the older man on stage.  
  
One thing was obvious; the old man in the flannel shirt and black cowboy hat was blind. Something about his throaty, wise, Southern accent that vibrated the floors as he sang crawled up his spine and chilled his neck with a kiss.  
His old, bass, dying, voice.  
  
The old man on stage had very few teeth, and around that toothless mouth was a ring of cracked lips. His milk blue eyes sat fixed on Tseng's young, scarred face. His bones shook, his skin was a maple brown and looked like map for long, snaky blue rivers, for his veins crawled up and down and all around his bony hands that clamped around the microphone.   
"Fine. You win. I'll take your hand, just don't let me fall, please let me stand. Oh. Death, my Savior comes, down this river to where I'm from. Oh, oh death, together we die, but I will fall instead of fly. O... death. Oh... death... oh death, we die."  
  
Then, the old man weakly walked away.   
Tseng turned away, wondering why he felt so deeply disturbed.  
  
As he turned to walk into the bathroom, the door opened.  
Another young man existed the bathroom as Tseng tried to make his way in.  
"Excuse me." The young man with dark red hair mumbled.  
  
"Reno?" Tseng asked as he pushed himself up against the wall, letting the red hared man pass.  
  
The young man with red hair stopped, and turned around. He cocked his head to the side. The young man had a narrow face lightly brushed with experience, and narrow, thin green eyes.  
  
"Do I know you?" The fair man asked as he crumbled his wet hands on his blue shirt-tails.  
  
"Tseng. I was an ex-Turk. I came here with Rude, you do remember us don't you?" Tseng brushed a lock of his long black hair behind his thin-framed shoulder. He took a small step forward.  
  
"It IS you. Stop playing fucking mind-games with me, Reno. I'd know that face anywhere." Tseng coiled his arms defiantly about his chest.  
  
"I don't know what your talking about." Reno turned his back to Tseng and began to walk back into the bar.  
  
"Your coming with me weather you like it or not, Reno. You don't belong in this hill-billy dump." As Tseng spoke, several large men with cowboy hats turned to look at him. The look on their face was like that of a dormant bull who was slowly waking up.  
Tseng placed his hand upon Reno's shoulder.  
Reno shrugged it off and muttered bitterly, "You better not say shit like that around these places. They will kick your bony ass so hard, you will be eating your own colon, Tseng."  
  
"So you do remember your old boss, you ass-hole." Tseng snapped as they both scrambled up upon a barstool side-by-side.  
  
"Listen Tseng, it's cool that your alive and all, but I don't want nuthin' to do with you, Rude, and Elena. The Turks are over and I have new fish to fry in my life. I don't have to follow you, or your stupid orders anymore. I'm done with the Shin-Ra and the Turks. You here me? I'm... PERMENENTLY off duty. I've got a new life, you know? Your as good as dead to me when that Temple fell on ya. God knows how you survived." As Reno spoke somberly, he cracked open a bar peanut.  
  
"Reno, I NEED you. Me 'n Rude need your help..."  
  
"Yeah, you need help all right, but just not mine." Reno passed Tseng a cold glance as he shoved the peanut in-between his tight lips. "Rude is a crazy mother fucker, too. Lord knows what he's doin'. I'm not surprised if he's been a professional hit-man or something the last couple of years."  
  
"Since when did you become so soft, you pussy?" Tseng grabbed a bar peanut as he replied like a chain-whip.  
  
  
Reno didn't answer. He ordered a beer.  
  
"Is that what's happened to you? You become a soft pussy? Just what's so new and important in your life that you can't help and old friend, huh? Maybe I should ask Elena. Sounds like even she's got more balls than you right now. Know where I can find her, you got her number?"  
  
The bar's pale light bounced off the hundreds off alcohol bottles behind the counter. A long mirror reflected Tseng's and Reno's pale and aging complexions. Reno watched Tseng's counter-part in the mirror instead of him directly.  
  
"Yeah, I got her number." The waitress slid Reno his beer. He caught it and took a long pull. "And it's none of your business what I've been up to these last, five, six years."  
  
"I can take a guess." Tseng pointed to the beer bottle with his brown eyes.  
  
"NO! For your information, after you left, me and Elena hit it off. See, she probably wouldn't want to be hearing from either of us right now. Seeing as you died and I dumped her. Everyone thinks your dead, Tseng." There was a long pause. Reno drank his beer.  
  
"You know who else is dead?" Tseng asked. Reno lifted his chin and looked into Tseng's dark-bullet eyes.  
  
"Reeve. I fuckin' shot the basterd. It was my whole reason for living. I shot him. I got him back for everything he did to me. I lost my arm, Reno. When the temple fell. I can't move it. Total nerve damage." Tseng lifted his limp, left arm.  
  
"Congratulations on your revenge. Piss off, Tseng. Let you and Rude conduct your little adventure by yourself." Reno finished his beer and ordered another.  
  
"Listen, what if I made it worth your while?" Tseng leaned in on the bar counter.  
  
"I'm listening." Reno replied as he dropped his eyes and fiddled with his empty beer bottle.  
  
"You always liked that little brunette number, didn't you? Tina, something like that. Cloud's girlfriend."  
  
Reno didn't answer. He simply listened.  
  
"I know where she is. I promise. One date with her. I know where to find her. You can ask her yourself." Tseng grinned.  
  
"You can't do that. She's not interested. That's impossible. She's always hated me, plus, she probably doesn't even remember us."  
  
"Maybe if you cleaned yourself up a little she will remember you. Maybe even like you if you put on your charms, man, so, what do you say?" Tseng held out his hand.  
  
Reno looked at it, hesitated, then shook it. "Fine," He said. "But only if you call Elena. Tell her your not dead. I want it all or none on your stupid fucking adventure. I miss the Turks. A reunion. Or something. Fuck. I don't have anyone. I got nuthin' to loose."  
  
"Deal." Tseng said.  
  
As they finished shaking hands, Rude exited the bathroom. He was rubbings his hands on a while piece of paper-towel.  
He looked up, smiled, and adjusted his tie.  
  
The three ex-Turks existed the country bar, and headed for the yellow cab parked outside. 


	5. V

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
  
Nanaki blinked.  
"Vanished. He's VANISHED! How... how can that be?!"  
Nanko, Nanaki's wife, shook her braided head.  
"I heard it on the radio box. Cid Highwind, your friend, my love, was hired by the Shin-Ra to take his flying plane and fly to the storm that happened yestereve and see what sort of weather pattern it was. He had weather instruments on his flying-plane. The weathergirl said he then vanished in the lightening."  
  
"Did he crash?!" Red 13 asked in a hurried voice.  
  
The young woman shook her head once more. "I do not know, my love. I do not know these things."  
  
"I must go and look for him! It is my honor. I can not let these questions be left unanswered."  
  
Nanko stroke her husband's bright red mane. "I can not stop you, though, my love, I do wish that you wouldn't go. We don't know what that evil weather was, and it's just too dangerous. It could have been the upset gods on a destructive rampage, and you would be hurrying yourself to an early grave." She let a coral pink smile touch her lips.  
  
Nanaki smiled up at her and flicked his feline-like ear. He rolled over onto his back; a low rumble thundered in his throat.   
Nanko sat up on her knees, and chuckled.  
"You would be worried about me if I left?" Red 13 asked playfully.  
"Of course I would!" Nanko smirked and rubbed his belly.  
  
Red 13 made a noise that was something like a purr.  
"I don't know why you married me. I'm not even... like you." Red 13 looked at her seriously with his flaming gold eyes.  
  
Nanko rested her head upon his soft, fuzzy stomach.  
"What do you mean, 'not-like-you?'?" She asked innocently.  
  
"Human, Nanko. I'm the last true being of the Gi bloodline. When you get older, maybe... maybe you will have doubts about me. I can't. Do things, like a human-man could for you, I don't know. Maybe you don't even get it."  
  
"No." Nanko sat up, and looked down flatly at him. "I know what you mean, and that's not why I married you. I LOVE you, Nanaki. I don't care if you have a body... of... of... anything!" She ran her fingers through his fur as she spoke. "I LOVE you for who you are! You could be a tortoise, and I'd still love you. You are wise, and funny, and a good leader to our people, Nanaki, and I NEVER want you to doubt how much I love you. And... I think, I think you should go. Go and find your friend, because I know you. You would never let yourself forget if you didn't." Nanko sat up on her knees once more and coiled his tail about her fingers.   
Nanaki flipped himself over onto his four paws, and began to nuzzle his face into her shoulder.  
She wrapped her arms about his huge, fire colored furry neck.  
"I love you, too, Nanko. And, thank you."  
"For what?" She asked in a whisper to his long ear.  
"For accepting me. For everything. For accepting me for what I am."  
"Hmmm. You're my big fuzzy, warm, kitty. And your all mine!" Nanko kissed his wet nose.  
"I must go, love. Wait up for me!" Red 13 trot past her, and glanced behind his shoulder.   
"Bye, sweetie!" She waved to him as she sat on her knees. A sad, wet look crept to her eyes as she watched Red 13 swiftly run up the wooden flight of stairs.  
  
Then, he was gone.  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Diary  
  
August 21, 2005  
  
Cloud and I talked. The storm passed over, literally and figuratively. It's all behind us, but, he said it's going to take a while to regain my trust.  
And he has every reason to be suspicious.   
  
Cloud said he would talk to Barret and explain what happened. But, I don't know. I feel all numb inside. I don't even feel sorry for kissing Johnny.  
When Cloud's gone, Johnny and I still visit each other.  
  
Am I digging myself my own grave- shooting myself in the foot- setting up for failure in my relationship with Cloud? Probably. Just like he said. I thrive on chaos. I don't know. I think I am just a confused little girl who doesn't know what she wants and doesn't know who she loves and doesn't know who loves her back.  
That's all.  
And as far as Barret goes, I don't want to loose our friendship, but, maybe it was finished a long time ago.  
When me and Cloud moved in.  
I don't think he wants my friendship, but I sure miss the way it used to be.  
  
It has been nasty is Costa del Sol lately. Lots and lots of rain and lightening. I sure miss having the news. Cloud doesn't own a TV or radio. I feel like I was just cut off from the rest of the world when I moved here.  
And I'm so lonely.  
  
I tell Johnny most everything. Turns out he IS Cid's son. Cid denounced him a long time ago. Cid doesn't even acknowledge his existence. Isn't that so sad? Johnny said that his father accused him of choosing lifestyle over life. Like Cid's one to talk! Just as well, Johnny doesn't look a thing like Cid. Johnny has red hair, Cid's a blonde.  
I wonder who Johnny's mother is? It could be that Sheila woman, could it? That would be weird.  
  
Well, when Cloud and I sat down and had that talk, this is how it went, Diary. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Cloud came home with the groceries. We hadn't been talking, not really, in three days. He said that on Sunday he wanted to have a sit-down talk about what happened when he came home with Barret and saw me on the couch with Johnny.  
So, we had just been waiting for Sunday to roll around when we both knew that we had time.  
So, Sunday came, like I said.  
And under some vanilla and strawberry ice-cream in a bowl we talked.  
  
"Listen, I, I don't know WHY this happened, ok? Let's just get one thing strait, I'm not MAD at you, Tifa, for what you did, I'm just a little upset. Sad, uhm, but I think I have the right to be, ok?" Cloud scratched the back of his head nervously as he spoke. Then, he paused, and shoveled in a spoonful of pink ice-cream.  
I didn't talk. I just stared at my soupy vanilla ice-cream sweating in-front of me.  
"I just want to know WHY! What was going through your HEAD at the time!? Why did you hurt our relationship like that! What could possibly possess you to... to... kiss someone else... I mean, do you... do you ... love me, Tifa?" He asked in a sincere whisper. I looked up.  
His blue eyes seemed to shine with pain. He didn't reach out. He didn't touch me. He was never good with words.  
  
"I'm lonely, Cloud." I said in a dead voice. Then, I lowered my face again.  
  
He asked me how I could be lonely. I was living with him. You know what I think? I think that the reason why I'm lonely, is because I think he's lonely, too. And I told him that. He went really, really quiet, then. I think that it's tough when you just have us two, and nobody else. No real friends.  
We talked well into the night and almost the next morning.  
We didn't talk in the morning, we just ate cornflakes for breakfast. Then, I went off and bought a six-pack and some hard lemonade.   
I came back from the store and we started talking again.  
When I returned, he was in a much better mood; he looked like he just figured something out. He said when I was gone, he talked to Barret on the phone.  
  
He said things will soon be much, much better from there on out.  
He said he also got some Neapolitan ice-cream.  
  
So, I opened two hard lemonades, and we sat outside on the balcony drinking, laughing, and eating Neapolitan ice-cream.  
Everything just may be ok again, Diary.  
And, I hope so.   
  
Yours, always and forever,  
  
Tifa Lockheart  
  
  
~  
  
Vincent kicked a stone.  
Yuffie got on his nerves.  
Just who does she think she is, anyway?  
Walking away from him like that, and for what?!  
  
He was just going to go back to the Shin-Ra mansion basement, and sleep.  
Everything would be ok again.  
He could forget that he shared the same planet as her. He could pretend that he never met her or knew her or that she even existed.  
He watched the stone make long rings over lap one another.  
Then, he walked on toward the direction of Niblehiem, trying to calm his mind with the creek's wet music.  
  
He clutched his limp, metal claw as he walked. He stepped over a fallen, rotten log.  
  
He wondered when the forest was going to hit a clearing. He knew that Niblehiem couldn't be much further.  
  
The forest seemed unusually quiet for sunset. He wanted to be out of the forest before dark. Not that SEEING in the dark was a problem; he actually had most of his senses heightened at night. It was simply that the monsters encounters were more frequent then. If he had someone else with him it wouldn't be as much of a problem.  
But Vincent was alone.  
He didn't want to rely upon his transformation; his biggest fear was if one day he turned- and it was permanent- that once day he couldn't control it and couldn't turn back. He never wanted to completely loose his humanity- he was afraid of what he may do to himself of other innocent people.  
  
"God." He gasped as he stopped and leaned against a thin tree. He slowly slid down and slumped to the forest floor with a crunch.  
He looked up to the stained glass, leafy canopy above him.  
The sun was set, and the sky was still on fire.  
The tree tops were brushing against each other, making waves of watery sounds.   
Shadows were coming out to play.  
Night noises were orchestrating and tuning their interments with buzzes, dashing in the underbrush sounds, and howls.   
Vincent shuttered.  
He began to felt more at ease with the nocturnal creatures around him.  
The colors above the tree tops were dulling; it was now a rutty copper. Far off in the East, the sky was already navy-blue with a few holes of stars.  
  
Vincent stood once more, and began to swiftly move. He was awake now. His eyes and his ears and his nose were keener, finally. If he kept up this fast pace, he would make Niblehiem by midnight.   
  
He stopped. He smelt something unusual.  
He listened.  
A owl swiftly flapper her wings. A wolf trotted silently, moving about like a cat- minding his own business.  
  
That was not what he smelt.  
  
It smelt like someone unfamiliar, someone unfriendly. Someone was watching him.  
He shot his red eyes about. They caught glints of light and flashed in the darkness. A whisper glided against a exhale of wind.  
  
Vincent reached for his gun. He lifted it, and pulled the safety off. He began walking once more, but his eyes would not remain still. The smell of what was watching him began to reek foul.  
  
A human shadow flickered across the tree tops. Vincent knew that it would be impossible for it to actually be human.  
He aimed his gun.  
It must be a monster.  
  
But what creature could move that quickly.  
Vincent wouldn't deny it. He was very, very afraid.  
  
He shot his gun, almost blindly, towards the shadow in the tree tops where the thought he saw the human-shaped shadow.  
  
He knew he hit nothing. He popped the gun, letting the empty shell fall. Another bullet entered the barrel chamber. He aimed again.  
Then, he spun around, letting his eyes dart about. He searched the endless shapes, gray and black shadows that bobbed in and out with the wind, forming and re-forming their figures.  
He thought he heard two voices in a blue, cold, zephyr.   
There were two figures.  
Vincent acted as fast as he could, and tried shooting one. He purposely aimed a little off, compensating for it's swift movement and the wind.  
  
There was a whimper. The shadow tumbled strait down off of a high tree branch. It fell like a sick bat from the sky.  
  
"Eve!" A voice from above cried out. The larger of the two shadow creatures glided downwards, zigzagging through the shadows as to throw off Vincent's aim.   
It landed beside the first shadowed creature.  
  
"Monster bastards." Vincent muttered as he ran towards the two figures. He felt slightly more confident now that he had an idea that they were on the ground someplace.  
However, he kept it in the back of his mind that these monsters had language, and - quite obviously, compassion. Perhaps he will just severely maim instead of simply destroy them.   
  
Vincent swallowed hard as he rain. A strong, pulsing, tingle of raw fear was gripping his chest and making his brain swim in his skull.   
  
Making quite a bit of noise with his feet, he ran to the clearing where he saw the two creatures fall. There, beside a large fallen oak tree, two vampires sat.  
  
One Vincent, even with his excellent night vision, could barely make out a form. It seemed perfectly adapt to nocturnal life- for it had not an ounce of light upon it.   
  
It looked up at Vincent. "You. You are not human! What are you?" It's hand was outstretched, and was clasping the others, obviously female's, hand. "How could you have seen us! Answer me, or I will crush your face. I swear it." The dark one had a male voice, and a ray of white-blue moon light reflected off of it's purely-black, shiny eyes.  
  
Vincent didn't respond to him. He simply kept his gun aimed at the vampire's head. He continued to wonder why he couldn't get himself to squeeze the trigger- it was so easy.  
  
"Answer me!" The vampire stood up swiftly. Vincent guessed his height to be somewhere around six-foot-six. The creature was thin, like a tree branch shadow. It swore a cape that fluidly glided about it's feet, like a puddle of night sky.  
  
"Don't. Don't. Hurt me. Or. I'll shoot. You." Vincent stammered.  
  
The creature dropped it's face, and looked down at it's bleeding counter-part. She was dead. Vincent looked at the sharp black profile against the moon's pale fallen rays.  
  
"She's dead, you idiot." The creature nudged her with what looked like a sharp foot. "I want to know who killed her. You SMELL like a filthy, disgusting human. She was only a damphire. I can survive a bullet in my heart. I'm sure you know what a damphire is. Because I SMELL it on you. Your not human, not really, you... are more... like US... perhaps even MORE interesting. As a doctor, though, she will be hard to replace. Thanks-a-lot. There aren't many like you. I'm sure of it now. Now that I've seen you close up." He nudged her again with his foot, then, he began to approach Vincent without a flinch of hesitation.   
  
"Don't come any closer!" Vincent ordered. His good hand trembled uncontrollably. The vampire took the gun from his hand, then tossed it beside Eve's limp body.  
  
The black vampire and Vincent stood and stared at each other, inches from one anther's face.  
Vincent gradually stopped shaking as he stared at his own reflection in the creatures animal eyes. They were two almond shaped bulges in it's black, human-shaped face.  
  
The vampire licked it's mouth in a perfect circle. Vincent had never seen a tongue so red before. It moistened his glossy, well formed, dark lips, then grimaced. Vincent saw his canine teeth. They were three times the length of a wolf's.   
  
"Come with me. Come with me back to where you belong. You have lived with the humans for too long. That's what I smell. The human smell on you is not your own; it belongs to a human female's!"  
  
"I'm not like you. I am a man." Vincent replied quietly.   
  
"You're a moron. You are fooling yourself. You could see the damphire and I move about in darkness. No human can! Don't fear me... what is your name?"  
  
"I am not going to tell you." Vincent answered honestly as his fear began to slide away through his fingertips.  
  
"Wise. You know that names have power. Very well. I respect that. But come with me."  
  
"I... I don't want to hurt anyone. No. Never. I'm staying with... I am staying among the people." Vincent felt himself take several steps backwards. "I already have enough reason to fear hurting someone. No. If you want me to become turned, like you, I will not, no, never. You don't even know what compassion is! Look! Your friend is dead and you don't even care!" Vincent nodded to the dead blonde woman who lay like a broken porcelain doll.  
  
Stygian turned and spat to his side. His wad of saliva exploded upon the forest floor. "She was more human than you. She renounced her humanity. She had very little vampire blood. It was only her great, great grandfather that was a vampire. I bet you are far less human than she. Come. I bet ten thousand souls that you don't even LIVE among humans because they are incapable of understanding you!" Stygian's mannerisms were theatrical and huge. He gesticulated with his delicate hands as he spoke eloquently.  
  
Vincent blinked. It was true. He slept in a coffin far beneath the Earth in the Shin-Ra mansion basement. No one understood him. He began to listen to the old vampire.  
  
Stygian gave something for what could possibly pass for a smile.   
  
"But I don't want to hurt anyone. You MUST hurt the humans to feed yourself at night." Vincent lowered his gun and placed it back on the holster on his hip.  
  
"True. But, they were meant for that! Don't you see! You are much, much greater than they are! I am not asking to turn you, child! I am asking you to give us a chance! Come back to your own people! Just for a day! Stay as long as you wish! Give us a chance, child, we are not evil. We only ask to live with our own kind where we are understood and accepted! We ask to simply be understood, and not be destroyed so quickly simply because we are feared and not given a chance. The humans ask for the same, and they are a much, much younger race than we. Hm?"  
  
This was true.  
  
Stygian leapt to a high tree branch. He jumped as if flying were his second nature. Vincent watched. He was, without a doubt, intrigued.   
Perhaps, he thought, he should see what the rest of his kind, the 'monsters' were like. Just for a evening. Maybe a day. A week. At most...  
  
The chaos inside of him stirred, and agreed. There was a large part of him that wished to leap into the air, and float off into the night like Stygian.  
  
"Come with me, child..." Stygian dangled his long hand down from the tree, offering. His nails were lengthy, black, and sharp, like wicked daggers.  
  
Vincent outstretched his own pale palm, and clutched Stygian's tightly.  
  
Stygian pulled Vincent up onto the tree branch that shook under their weight.  
  
A small voice within Vincent whispered,  
  
"This is the worst mistake you have ever made... You betray us. You betray everything. You betray your friends, and you won't come back." 


	6. VI

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
"Why do we crucify ourselves?"  
(Tori Amos. From the song, 'Crucify' off the album, 'Little Earthquakes')  
  
  
  
Yuffie looked around. She knew that the giant lightening vanished somewhere around here... But. It was gone now.  
She should have not walked out on Vincent like that.  
What if he were in trouble? What if he needed her?  
  
More like she needed him just about now...  
Looks like your in over your head, girl. She says to herself as she looks around the dark, damp swamp.  
  
Something touched her leg!   
  
Yuffie rubbed her goose bumped filled arms. Then, she clutched herself.   
She trudged on through the thick, black quagmire. Mud was infiltrating her boots! Gross! It felt like human waste clawing in-between her toes.   
  
Spanish moss hung limply like gray, dusty, grandmother lace slung carelessly on some great armrest. The thin black tree branches twisted and knotted between each other.  
Not an ounce of sunlight escaped the gnarled tapestry of vines and writhing tree roots.  
The forest swamp looked like giant, petrified snakes with patches of moss upon them.   
Yuffie saw her breath leap out before her in foggy clouds.  
She felt cold, but she continued wading on.  
Every step she took, a slurpy sound followed. She left a large, long trail of footprints in the soft, muddy, sand.  
  
The other sounds around her always echoed.  
Owls. Yuffie thought. Frogs. That's all they were.  
The giant, dark holes in the huge swap trees looked like eyes.  
  
They watched her walk.  
  
There were just a couple of escaped sun rays that slid through the twisted canopy above. They brushed warmth against her as she walked underneath them.   
  
Something bright and orange darted through the corner of her eye. Yuffie stopped walking. The air seemed to change; the dank, oily smell of the swamp seemed somewhat colder and sweeter like a splash of fresh water.  
Yuffie was SO thirsty...  
  
She turned around. Something was following her; that was for sure. Something. A cat. It was brightly colored. Maybe it was a mountain lion.  
  
Yuffie swallowed hard. She walked on. She was tiered, dirty, and sweaty. Flies danced about her. There were pink bite marks on her thin legs.  
  
She began to whistle and sing to herself to put her soul at bay.  
  
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine... uhm, you make me happy, when skies are... gray." She noticed how small her voice seemed against the rest of the swamp.  
"Uhm, you don't know how dear, how much I love you, please don't take my sun beam away, uh, I don't know, dear, the rest of this so-ong. Please don't take my moon shine away!"  
  
Slurp.  
  
Slurp.  
  
Slurp.  
  
Her feet became caked with muddy, gray clay and dirt. She heard a twig break.  
  
Crack.  
  
She froze.   
  
"God! &^$#@! DAMNIT!" An angry man's voice yelled someplace out in the shadows- in the distance of the swamp.  
  
"Who's there!" Yuffie yelled, digging into her hip-pouch for her dagger. She looked around, her breath panicking. Her heart started drumming in her throat and forehead.   
  
"...What? Who's there!" The man's voice replied. Then, Yuffie heard a rumble in the bushes.  
"@%$%@%%^%$!!!! Thorns!" The man cursed.   
  
"Cid?!" Yuffie called, putting her dagger down. She recognized the curses.  
  
Slowly, a shadowy human figure emerged from the underbrush.   
Cid stumbled out into the mud headfirst.  
He was covered in red bumps and purple bruises. Patches of his clothes were burned, and his flight goggled were plastered in smoky residue and filth.  
He reeked of fire and gasoline.  
Cid collapsed from the underbrush to Yuffie's muddy feet.   
He grabbed her ankle.  
  
"Cid?! What the heck happened to YOU? You're the LAST person I'd expect to see!"  
  
Cid looked up.  
Above him he saw Yuffie's bright smile and sparkling eyes. Her face was smeared with black dirt. There was a bright cut on her cheek, and her hair looked greasy and unwashed.  
  
"Hi?" She said.  
  
"Jesus. Christ." Cid mumbled, shoving his face into the sand.  
  
  
Near them, a flicker of red rushed by in the forest swamp.  
  
  
~  
  
"Your getting in too deep,  
You have been living in the sky  
Poetry drips in your sleep,  
And you forgot to teach me how to fly.  
  
Through solid air we move,  
Hand in hand, to the castle door.  
You, I think it's destiny who choose,  
Weather we win or loose, weather we hit the sky or the floor.  
  
Teach me, I want to learn to fly.  
I want to kiss a movie star,  
I don't want to be buried. I don't want to stop and die.  
Come on.   
We have made it this far..."  
  
Vincent opened his eyes, and looked at Stygian.  
  
"You just wrote that atop of your head?" Stygian asked as Vincent lowered his harmonica. "Amazing. I've never seen a talent like yours, Valentine. Simply. Astounding. Ever thought of getting a record deal?" Stygian asked.  
  
"I had one. With Phoenix Down Records. I even put out an album. Last I heard, they put out another records after this kid broke into my basement and stole a tape of songs I had. They produced another record without my permission. I never saw a penny of the profits. Record dealing bastards." Vincent replied absently as he rested his head against the window. He fiddled with his harmonica with his good hand.  
  
"Then what happened?" Stygian asked, staying within the darker areas of the room.  
  
"Nothing, really. I made an appearance on the Conan O'Brien show, then went back to the Shin-Ra mansion basement. No tour. I never wanted to go on tour and do huge stage shows at the expense of the record company. I didn't want to find myself in debt. I guess that's the shortest music career on record."  
  
Stygian hesitated, and ran a finger through his lengthy dark hair. "What- what was your record called?"  
  
Vincent sighed, watching his own close reflection on the glass. His breath fogged up near his nose. "Nightmares Under the Stairs." He answered nearly inaudibly. Talking of it brought back hazy memories of himself playing his guitar in a recording booth. He still had two hands, then. He still to this day couldn't play a guitar again if he wanted to.  
Which he didn't.  
He swore he would never touch a guitar again.  
  
"Cool name." Stygian walked about the room with his hands shoved into his black jeans pocket.  
  
"I suppose." Vincent closed his eyes once more once he caught a glimpse of his own eyes in the reflection on the window glass. He shifted his weight as he sat upon the window's pane.  
  
"Where did you think of it?" Stygian continued to pace about the darker areas of the empty wooden room.  
  
"It was named after a song I did. Could we... possibly talk about something else?"  
  
"Sure. Who are your parents?" Stygian kicked at a dust bunny with his sharp boot toe.  
  
"Why do we have to talk about me? I would rather hear a few things about YOU!" Vincent snapped around and faced the vampire as he sat upon the window sill.  
  
"Ask away!" Stygian dramatically bowed before Vincent. A bleach white, Cheshire cat smile crested his narrow, colorless face.  
Vincent paused and thought.   
No particular question came to mind...  
But he knew they were there. There were millions of questions to ask...  
  
"What were those thunder storms that passed? There were gargantuan lighting ... beasts- for lack of a better word- that passed overhead a few days ago. They were. They were HUGE! I KNOW it has something to do with the Jenova creature that you once kept in MY basement- but moved. I am assuming that the remains of Jenova are HERE, somewhere on the Northern continent. It seems the only logical place to bring it. Just what are you and your people planning?!"   
  
"Hm." Stygian's smile collapsed. He dug his black hands deeper into his pocket. "You sure seem to know a lot about us. Much more than I have anticipated."  
  
"Stop dancing about the questions."  
  
"Honestly, Vincent, I can't answer those for you. It's confidential. If I told you, I'd have to kill you."  
  
"Don't bullshit me." Vincent grunted. His dark red eyes sat fixated upon the vampire.  
  
"Fine. You want to know, Vincent, then, come. Join my side. It's the only way I can honestly tell you, if I know that I can trust you." Stygian pulled out his long, dark hand, and offered it once more.  
  
Vincent shook his head, "No deal."  
  
"Then no explanation. Fair is fair." He retracted his hand.  
  
Vincent's eyes fell in thought, and then they rose once more. Stygian's eyes remained plastered upon Vincent's features, feeding for unspoken information. Body language.  
  
Vincent was difficult to read. Stubborn, closed off, but not impossible. Stygian has met his type before. All men whom are closed off have a weak point, a crack in their wall.  
He just needed to find his.  
Stygian never claimed not to be manipulative.  
  
Vincent could not tell that Stygian watched him, for the color of the vampire's eyes showed no pupil that noticeably moved. That, in fact, made Vincent exceedingly uncomfortable- he never knew if Stygian was looking at him in the eyes or not.  
  
"There... is something in the Northern continent that draws you and your society here, isn't there, besides the fact that it is away from most humans." Vincent's face rose defiantly. His expression was tight and volcanic with ideas.  
  
"You sure are presumptuous. Maybe we just like the cold weather?" Stygian remarked sarcastically.  
  
"No. It doesn't make any sense. You're a vampire. You need at least a city around you at all times to feed."  
  
"I can feed off of animals and stupid monsters, what's your point? I CAN feed off of my own kind, Vincent. Silly, silly monster who thinks he's a human!" Stygian's tone became increasingly smart and sharp. He had over 2,000 years to hone on in on his sarcasm skills.   
  
"But nothing beats the taste of human blood. Come off it! There is something that draws millions of your people here. And I bet it had something to do with Sephiroth. Or is it..." Vincent turned around, and looked out the window, there, near him was the ancient ruined city not far off in the distance.   
  
Stygian and Vincent stood together in an empty log cabin-- on the Northern continent- a human once lived in several decades ago. The cabin was completely empty, except for layers of dust and lost memories that lay scattered about the shadows and floors.  
The sun was sinking.  
  
They stared at each other for a moment. A glare as hard as stone passed between them.  
  
"Or is it the Ancients, specifically, one Ancient. Cetra, Stygian. I know that word, too." Vincent snarled.  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about." Stygian turned his back on Vincent, and paused. Neither spoke. Then, Stygian turned around once more, flaring, "You're being unfairly judgmental to me, Vincent! You pass me off as being evil before you even get to know me! I thought you of all people would know how that FEELS!"  
  
Vincent stared hardly at the vampire, then, his face fell. "I'm... sorry, Stygian. Fine, I'll go with you, to your city underground."  
  
Far beneath the cold snow and ground, lay the central city of monsters. The same sort that Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, Barret, Cid, Red 13, Reeve, Yuffie, and Vincent fought so hard against so many years ago.  
Vincent agreed to go and visit it.  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Diary  
  
September 2, 2005  
  
I feel SO good. Johnny and I talked.  
  
We talked for HOURS! We talked about Cloud, me, him, and Barret. He convinced me to stay with Cloud, and make up with Barret, and me and him could still be friends. He met another girl, too.   
Problem is, I'm getting these, uhm, urges- towards him, Dairy.  
I think he's so cute, and he's so nice to me.  
I know, it's bad, and I shouldn't feel that way, and I tell myself to stop it all the time, Dairy, especially now that he has a girlfriend.  
But we have known each other for a really, really long time!  
  
I met him almost six years ago, but we were never, ever close at all. I just knew his name and we would talk sometimes. It was just fate that brought us together in Costa del Sol.   
  
There are some odd things about Johnny, though, that I learned. First of all, I don't know what he does, exactly, for a living. I know that he is really into computers and stuff, and I know that he fixes them, but I don't think that's what pays his bills. I know that he keeps A LOT of porn in the house.  
  
That makes me a little uncomfortable...  
  
Yours truly,  
  
Tifa Lockheart  
  
  
~  
  
Rude, Tseng, and Reno stood on Elena's front porch.  
Tseng paused, glanced at Reno, then knocked.  
  
"She may not be home." Reno muttered as he pulled out a cigarette.   
  
After he knocked, Tseng paused.  
  
There was a rustling at the door. Then, it slowly opened.  
Elena stared at them a moment. She was wearing nothing but a bathrobe and dishelved blonde hair. An orange cat circled about her ankles.  
  
"Oh my god!" She finally exploded the moment she recognized the men at the door.   
  
Then, she slammed her apartment door shut. Tseng heard a lock snap shut on the other side of the door.  
  
Before Rude, Tseng, and Reno could turn and leave, the locks unsnapped, and the door flung open again.  
  
"Oh my god!" She screamed again.   
  
Again, the door slammed shut.  
  
"Jesus." Reno sighed impatiently. "She gets stupider every year."  
  
Rude smirked silently to himself.  
  
"Elena! Come on! Are you going to act all crazy or are you going to leave us standing here?" Tseng banged rapidly on the apartment door.  
  
"Just... go away!" Her voice penetrated through the heavy door.  
  
"No, it's me, Tseng! Come on, Elena, just open up!"  
  
"Not unless the other two leave, and you're supposed to be DEAD! You hear me!? Your not supposed to be ALIVE, Tseng!"  
  
"Open up, and we will talk!" Tseng suggested.  
  
"Oh... ok." Elena replied hesitantly. She stood at the other side of the door with her ear pressed against it. Carefully, she opened up once more. Tseng glanced back at Rude and Reno as he entered, leaving them behind.   
Reno lit another cigarette.   
He glanced at Rude as the door slammed.  
  
"What are you lookin' at?" Reno barked.  
  
  
  
Elena was pressed against her apartment front door. Her arms were defensively coiled about her small body as he eyes fell to the floor.  
She spoke quickly and forcefully. "What are you doing here?"  
  
Tseng kept his distance and his hands were folded behind his back. His eyes were stuck to her fallen blue ones.   
"I came here to see you. I thought it was about time for a visit. Reno gave me the address." The orange cat circling his legs like a tiny shark distracted Tseng.  
  
Elena's apartment smelt of wild flowers and shampoo. The bathroom across the hallway radiated heat that brushed lightly against Tseng's collar.   
  
"Yeah, well, I'm here, you see me? Now, what do you want? And what are THEY doing here?"  
  
"Is that anyway to treat an ex-boyfriend? We never officially broke up, you know." Tseng lifted the orange cat and stroked its belly.  
  
"She doesn't like being picked up." Elena looked up, and gestured her head to the cat.   
Tseng dropped her gently, and brushed the cat hair from his shirt.   
  
"Your supposed to be dead, Tseng, that's why we never broke up. And I... I can't take this. This is too weird. I went to your FUNERAL, for god's sake. So did Reno. It's like entering the twilight zone." Elena was clearly shaking as she spoke, her voice quaked. She swiftly walked to the cupboard, and began digging loudly through one of the drawers. Eventually, she found what she was looking for as she pulled out a lighter.   
  
Tseng watched her head for a jacket hanging for a hook. She groped through one of the pockets until she pulled out a cigarette.  
  
"So, why are you here?" She asked as she lit the dark tip. "Did you come over here to fuck up my life then die again? Is that what you want? Huh? Is it!? Answer me, Tseng!!!" Elena's dark blue eyes became hard as she glared at him from across the kitchen counter.  
  
Tseng answered at first with a silent stare. "No. I came here to ask you for your help."  
  
"Huh. My help. Well. That's a first. Maybe I should mark my calendar. 'Tseng comes back from the dead and asks his ex-girlfriend for help.' Yeah. Right, Tseng. Get real." She coughed and choked on the smoke. She wasn't used to it, Tseng noted. She never smoked before.  
  
Her eyes watered as she spoke hoarsely, "-Cough-Maybe, huhm, heh. Uh, maybe we- uh, should get back together, then, huh?" She beat her chest with her fist and coughed again on the cigarette smoke. She inhaled another handful of ribbon and silver-blue toxins.  
  
"Maybe. Maybe I'll take you out to dinner when we get back from the favor I'm asking you." Tseng bent down and began stroking the cat's head. Elena watched, listening.  
  
"I think... that something funny is going on. Noticed the weather lately?" Tseng stood and asked.  
  
"Yeah. It's been weird. Lot's of lightening and stuff." She glanced out her window and placed her hand on her hip while taking another pull of the cigarette.  
  
"Well, just for shits and giggles, me Reno, and Rude decided it would be fun to bring the Turks together for one more mission 'on duty.'"  
  
"RENO agreed to this? Puh. Sounds stupid and fishy to me. What are you REALLY after, Tseng, or did some piece of the Temple hit your head harder than we all thought?"  
  
"Very funny, Elena. I'm serious."  
  
Elena let a heavy, thick pause pass between them before she answered softly, "I..I..I don't know. Tseng. I don't know." 


	7. VII

Stygian and Vincent stood atop a flat, dusty, plateau. Above them, was a large roof covered in long, pointy stalactites and stalagmites. Crystals glossed the cavern rooftop in rainbows of colors, as if the sky were a darkened, mysterious, cloudy terrain yet to be explored.  
  
Nearly two miles below them, lay a vast city reaching far beyond the stretch of Vincent's line of sight.   
  
  
Roads wandered and wrapped around tall, oddly shaped golden skyscrapers. Ruby and diamond light twisted with emerald and cornflower colors as they ran up and down tall buildings.   
The industrial area of the city billowed out misty smoke into a huge hole that penetrated the cavern roof.  
  
All the buildings seemed more or less organic, with an eccentric, abstract style to their shapes. Some of them had circular windows, others looked more or less like gnarled seashells.  
  
All of them were colored in crystals, iridescent opals or other Earthly tones.   
  
Sounds bit the air. Some of them chimed like bells, others beeped, honked, or tut-tut-tooted.   
  
Far away, in the Eastern area of the city, was a huge ink spot. It had a wavy edge, and went on into the infinite areas of the huge metropolis.   
  
"What is that huge, black area of the city?" Vincent asked as he sat down on the plateau's edge. Dangling his feet.  
  
"That's the ocean. Really, it's just a huge underground lake. You can't see the harbor because the skyscraper is in the way. Here, let me give you a tour. Everything in the city, is environmentally sound. We don't use an ounce of mako to power anything. Unlike the humans, we don't see nature as something to conquer or tame. We instead live along side nature. That's why there are so many of our people roaming about freely in the World Above. And, see, the industrial area of the city is really letting out water-vapor, not smoke."  
  
"No mako? That's impossible. Then, what do you use for energy?" Vincent asked.  
  
"Mostly, we use geothermal. Remember, we have been on the Earth nearly 2,000 years longer than your humans have. The Cetra, the earliest humans, have taught us a lot, grant it, including architecture. We also use a little bit of hydroelectricity, and wind-power- mostly for the industry. We don't use solar because it's weak, and most of the city's residences can't stand the sunlight. Like we vampires. And the werewolves, and the darkelves- whom call themselves drows."  
  
Vincent nodded and listened. He began to re-think the creatures he once simply defined as 'monsters.' He once used to shoot and slaughter them, without second whim, thinking they were stupid and just posed a threat. He thought they were mutated animals- something to be hated and abolished... now... witnessing their city in person... a place that on the outside LOOKED MORE successful than any human city he had ever seen...   
  
"We are also home to many elves, halflings, half-elves, orcs, gnomes, sphinxes, gorgons, harpies, just to name a few. Thousands of creatures claim residence here. Mostly, we live in harmony. It's the humans that we tend to be violent with. Although, it's not unheard of to have one or two humans to come here. If they pose no threat, then, we let them be. Some whom have come here have renounced their humanity and all ties that they had with human society. They actually have become successful here." Stygian sat down beside Vincent, and glanced at him as he paused.  
  
"What about you... You must drink the blood of a human to survive, what do you do?" Vincent asked sincerely.  
  
"We leave the city to hunt. You know that I was going to answer you the truth, Vincent. I won't lie. I drink human blood on a daily basis." Stygian answered without remorse.  
  
"I know. I know that." Vincent lowered his head.  
  
"You would fit in perfectly, here, Vincent. No one would reject you for being different. We would welcome you with open arms, even with the chaos inside of you." Stygian smiled slowly. Vincent looked into his reflection in Stygian's ink-black eyes.  
  
Vincent didn't know what to say. A huge part of him wanted to live here... a new home. No more nightmares. Friends. Real friends whom understood the creature inside of him- the creature he could not control- the creature that was most definitely one of them. A monster.  
  
"I...Need more time to think about it." Vincent replied.  
  
"I understand, you can take a look around, if you like. This city could be yours, Vincent. Your new home." Stygian lifted his claw like hand; he offered the jeweled city that stretched endlessly on a beautiful horizon before them.  
  
Vincent was tempted.  
  
"Want to see what I do for a living, Vincent? Want to come to my lab and see the thing that our research is creating? Perhaps that will make up your mind."  
  
"I...I don't know. Maybe. I suppose..." Curiously, he answered. But something within him churned. Something was wrong. Something was not right, a little off.   
  
It was all too good to be true.  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Dairy  
  
September 12, 2005  
  
Dear Diary,  
What a day it's been. It's been just like a dream. Woke up too late, what's happening to me? I used to never sleep in.   
  
My mother's lawyer called. She was the one who woke me up. Rather, I should call her my step-mom's lawyer now. That's what she told me. She told me I had been adopted when I was five. They located my real mom.  
She's dead.  
They only found that she was my birth mom from the records. See, they just sold her property at auction. Here let me try to explain it to you, god knows I need to write it down because I'm really, really stressed about it and no one to talk to.  
I have no memories before Niblehiem. I have no memories before I was five, really, when I moved there. I vaguely remember a foggy faced woman named Matty when I was little. Maybe she was a old nanny we had or something, but anyway...  
  
My mother's lawyer told me, that the woman who died committed suicide. She hung herself, my real mom. She was a rich woman who lived on the top plate of Midgar. My real mom was married to a man, who was a Turk, but he wasn't my real dad. That Turk's name is Vincent Valentine Sr.  
That makes... see, this is why I'm ready to throw up in shock, Vincent is my half brother.  
  
My step-mom's lawyer said, she told me everything, she said that I was at the right age to know, that when they adopted me when I was five, that my real name wasn't Tifa. THEY named me that.  
  
My real name was Isabell.  
  
(My step-mom couldn't tell me anything in-person, because she's dead, too. Breast cancer. She's the one who raised me in Niblehiem.)   
  
I told Cloud all this. He said that it's nothing that I should be freaking out about because it's all in the past, and I am who I am now. And, I guess that's true. But you can't really know what I'm feeling unless you were in my shoes. I'm feeling, shocked, and sad, and lonely, and, I guess the way that my half-brother feels sometimes.  
Why did our genetic mom kill herself? What happened to dad? I guess that's how Vincent became a Turk. He must have inherited it- they must have just let him in. Makes sense. Shin-Ra was auctioning off their mansion. I also learned that THE Shin-Ra mansion in Niblehiem was THEIR property. I guess that's why Vincent spent so much time there.  
  
Too much to swallow?  
  
Exactly. That EXACTLY how I feel, too. Overwhelmed. Exhausted. Scared, too, for some reason. Cloud thinks it's no big deal. No big deal?! Vincent and I are half-brother-and-sister!!!  
  
You do the math.  
  
Exhausted, but yours forever,  
  
Tifa (Isabell Valentine) Lockheart  
  
~  
  
Tseng paced about Elena's apartment. He wondered just how long Reno and Rude would really wait.  
He wondered if they left already. They never were very patient.   
Tseng looked out the apartment window.   
The orange cat leapt up on the window sill, and begged Tseng for attention.  
Tseng approached the cat, and rubbed it's ears. It began to ruble with pleasure.  
  
Elena watched them from across the living room.  
  
"All right. I will go with you. On the condition that you take me out to dinner after, and you tell me exactly what we are doing and where we are going, and as long as I never have to deal with Reno."  
  
"Deal. First off, We are going to investigate the lighting." Tseng replied as he continued stroking Elena's orange cat.  
  
"I don't get it." Elena said as she ashed her cigarette into the kitchen sink. "Why so big on the lightening. Is it a Shin-Ra thing?"  
  
"No. It has a lot to do what Reeve told me before he... passed away." Tseng stopped himself before he admitted to Elena that he shot Reeve point blank in the head just a few weeks ago.   
  
"Reeve is dead?" Elena looked up as she walked into her bedroom, removing her bathrobe. Tseng stayed in the living room, talking in yells.  
  
"Yeah! Real tragedy! He was shot! President Julius went to his funeral and all! Well, he told me that there were a lot of funny things going on with the remnants of Jenova. Shin-Ra has little to do with it, rather it's the monsters acting up. That's all I know. I know where to get more information, but I really don't want to do it without you. See, this guy named Ray has a lot of insider stuff. He's an explorer." Tseng went on as Elena emerged from her bedroom, dressed in her old Turks uniform.  
  
"Looking sharp, Elena." Tseng turned to her and smiled. His grin was as long as his attitude.  
  
Elena, a tall, thin blonde in high heels and a navy blue dress suit, took the compliment- and returned it with a classy grin.  
  
"Th... thanks, Tseng, means a lot to me." She sighed and spoke gently, then, headed for the door.  
  
Rude and Reno were outside waiting, leaning against the apartment hallway and smoking cigarettes.  
  
"Took you guys long enough. Banging around again?" Reno asked as Tseng shut Elena's apartment door.   
Tseng socked Reno in the arm for making such a crude comment.  
Rude himself, only smiled.  
  
Elena locked her door, and didn't glance back.  
  
~  
  
Yuffie and Cid wandered aimlessly about the swamp.  
All the while, Yuffie's paranoid thoughts, ("We are being followed by a fast-moving-red thing in the forest, Cid! I swear! Oh-my-god- there it is, wait, no, it's gone again,") kept Cid on his toes as being the cool-headed one.  
Which was difficult for him.  
  
"I still don't get what you're doing here, Yuffie. And why, dear god, out of all the billions of $@!^%$^ people in the world, I had to run inta' 'ya."  
  
"I told you, Cid. I was chasing the lighting. I got separated from Vincent. We were going back to Niblehiem for his sake. HE wanted to go HOME. And we were, till we got separated, like I said." Yuffie tried to explain without sounding like she was whining too much.  
Her legs were sore and tiered.  
Her ankles were bloodied and blistered.  
She just wanted to go HOME...  
Back to Wutai with her fa-  
No. She thought, quickly.  
She didn't want to go home to her father. NEVER.  
  
Anything was better than THAT.  
She glanced up at Cid. Almost anything.  
  
"Why do you hate me so much, Cid. And why do you like Vincent so much?" Yuffie asked, bluntly. She didn't hold much back.  
  
Cid looked down at her as they walked.  
He paused.  
"I don' know if you would understand, Yuffie. But, I don' hate 'ya."  
"You don't?!"  
"No! You've proved yourself to me on a number of occasions. You CAN fight. You're just... a lil' young, is all. And as far as Vincent goes, it's a mutual respect thing. A guy thing. Somethin' we really don't go 'round talkin' about." Cid tried to explain. He was tiered too, and didn't much feel like talking.  
After all, his beloved plane just went down...  
Hit by lighting.  
  
  
"Oh. I get it. A guy thing, huh? Sort of like me 'n Cloud?"  
"Huh? Yeah. Something like that." Cid glanced down at her again. The moment she said Cloud's name, Cid noticed a blossoming red blush on her cheeks.  
Cid shook his head and continued walking through the thick, soggy, quagmire.  
  
They continued on in a thin silence. The swamp noises made Yuffie quake in uneasiness, for the combination of her exhaustion and the alien noises combined and then, trumpeted in her mind.  
The swamp smelt of raw sewage, seven year old yogurt that has been left under the sofa, and sulfur. Cid decided that after a few minutes of being here, that he was quite used to the rancid stench.  
Yuffie wasn't.  
Every step she took, she felt as if she were going to gag.  
  
There was a gentle rustle in the bushes. Yuffie stopped walking.  
"What now?" Cid cried. "It was just the wind. We are NOT being followed by a red beast."  
  
"Then what's THAT!?" Yuffie pointed. Her face was the color of a bleached corpse.  
  
Cid turned around.  
  
There, under a bush, was a huge mound of red fur.  
Cid approached the leafy hedge, and parted the shrubbery.  
  
There, looking up at him, were the two huge golden pairs of eyes that belonged to none other than Red 13. 


	8. VIII

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Tifa's Dairy  
  
September 13, 2005  
  
Dear Diary,  
  
Cloud talked to Barret today. And I talked to Johnny again. Me and Johnny talked about the Vincent thing. He said that was weird, exciting, and really really cool. I asked, "How's that?" He said that it was something from a movie; a beautiful girl with a mysterious past and everything. Murder, suicide, money, the whole nine yards, he said. And a long-lost half-brother, oh, boy. Then, he asked me how me and Cloud were doing. I guess we have been ok.  
You know, people who haven't been in a serious relationship wouldn't really ever understand. I guess you have to be in love to really know, but, when you get together with someone, it isn't remotely like it is in the story books. You still are who you are inside. If you go into a serious relationship feeling lonely- that loneliness just doesn't get sucked away into the real hole of a nothingness that you feel- it stays there. You wouldn't think it would, but it does. Nothing ever changes inside unless you make it go away.  
  
But I don't know how.  
  
Is everyone this lonely when they are in love?  
  
I don't know, diary, I don't know. People say when you meet, 'the one,' you just know. But, what if another 'one' comes along? Are there two? What if there was no such thing as 'the one' in the first place? Or maybe, only some people were destined to have soul-mates, and not everybody. Like Barret. He's getting on in age, has a daughter, doesn't expect to fall in love ever again. Maybe Marlene is his soul-mate. Do soul-mates have to be lovers or can they be children or best-friends?  
  
I think I LOVE Johnny, Diary, that's why I'm crying again.  
But I don't know HOW I love him, too. I love Barret. And Cloud. Just... not me.  
  
Johnny said the smartest thing to me the other day. And I started to cry when he said it. It... just was to true, it touched me. Ok. Here goes. This is what Johnny told me, and, I think it will help you, too.  
  
"All the love you have been giving, was all really meant for you."  
  
That's all. Good night, Dairy.  
Yours truly,  
  
Tifa (Isabell Valentine) Lockheart  
  
  
~  
  
"Let me introduce you two. Vincent, this is Tori. Tori, Vincent Valentine." Stygian said pleasantly. Vincent took the woman's hand, and kissed her soft palm.  
  
"Oh. What a gentleman! Are you a resident, here, Mr. Valentine?" Tori asked.  
  
"No." Vincent glanced to the black vampire. "Not yet, anyway."  
  
"Oh. I hope you do enjoy your stay. Have you seen Dr. Stygian's lab yet? He's on the brink of some exciting new research." Tori asked. She was a pleasant-human-looking woman in a red dress.  
  
"No, Tori, he hasn't we were about to head over there after I gave him the tour of the office. But Vincent has barely seen the city yet! Tori, since your off work now, why don't you give him the grand tour of the city, and you can save the tour of my lab for last. I've barely got any work done at all in the past two days since... Since Eve has gone missing. I hope though, that this isn't super-imposing." Stygian passed a knowing glance to Vincent.  
Tori smiled, exceedingly pleased to have the honor of showing Vincent about.  
  
"Sure! No one knows the city better than me, anyway! No, this isn't super-imposing, really." Tori replied, placing her hand on Vincent's shoulder while kindly smiling.   
  
"Well, good. I will see you both later." Stygian walked off without a further explanation or long-drawn-out-formal goodbye.  
  
Vincent saw it as rather rude and abrupt to be shoved off on someone else's shoulder's so quickly. Tori, however, seemed delighted.  
  
Tori was a vampire, however, she seemed to be of a different sort than Stygian. She, unlike him, would have perfectly blended in with human society by her outward appearance. Her strait hair slid down in hooked, brunette ringlets onto her shoulders. Her arms slid out of her red dress sleeves in gentle, blue-ish white curves. Her neck was much like a swan's, with a soft, sliding form that delicately lead up to a porcelain, china-doll face.   
She painted her lips the color of the liquid she lived upon.  
A thick, muddy blood red.  
  
Her eyes, thought Vincent. 'They give it away that she doesn't breathe.'  
  
"Shall we?" She asked politely.  
Vincent nodded and followed her out of Stygian's office building.   
  
They walked out into the street by stepping down a small flight of concrete stairs.   
Tori raised her hand as if she were a tour guide following procedure.  
"Well, this is your first time in our fair city, isn't it?"  
Vincent nodded.  
Tori smiled. Her thick red lips shimmered under the soft, blue glow of the street lights.  
"Welcome to New Gomorra, the city under the snow." Tori tossed her chestnut brown terraces of hair over her shoulder. Vincent followed her as she began to walk.   
Her heels clicked rhythmically against the sidewalk that glittered- as if everything were made of diamonds.  
  
"Did Dr. Stygian tell you how the city was founded? It's actually a really interesting story." Tori asked as Vincent walked around in wonderment.   
  
"No. Not really." He said as he stared at buildings they passed by. All the buildings looked as alive as their residences; some of them looked like gigantic, Cetra-like buildings. They were shaped like giant sea-shells, their opal insides carved out and lived in. Others looked like organic, rock faced living beings, with irregular shapes and textures with oval windows.   
Some were piled onto each other and cramped and jammed into skyscraper like structures, others were spaced out and made into shopping stores.  
  
The oddest, and one of the tallest buildings, was one that looked as if it were made entirely out of bones. On it's corners, was something that looked like a spine; for it's windows it was as if it were made out of tusks and teeth to make it's frame. It loomed over Vincent as they walked by, casting odd skeletal shadows over him.  
  
The whole city had a moon-light, dreamy glow to it, for on every corner was a tall street lamp. The street lamps were a sort of plant, posting long, gnarled roots into the glittering concrete. Trees, and 'people' lined the streets. Vegetation lived along side the people of New Gomorra; vines and ivy snaked up all the buildings.   
Trees made themselves at home as the people.  
Several of them had taken root right in the middle of the streets and had been doing so for what seemed like thousands of years. Some of the trees looked ancient and gigantic. Cars simply went around them.   
  
The people that passed Vincent and Tori paid them little mind.  
Gorgons, trolls, dragons, and some things that Vincent had no idea what to call them walked and talked with each other casually- living out their lives.   
Some were beautifully colored and in the latest and greatest fashion. Others reminded him of the ordinary folk back in the World Above.  
  
A woman with butterfly wings on her back even smiled and winked at Vincent.  
He tried to smile back.  
  
"...Dr. Stygian is actually one of the oldest residents here. He was created by the founder of the city, an old, wise, vampire named- hey, Vincent! Are you listening to me?" Tori nudged him in the ribs as she stopped herself from talking.  
  
"Huh? Oh, forgive me, I was just captivated... The city here, it's... actually so beautiful, so alive, so unique. Even the AIR here, is so clean and fresh compared to home." Vincent remarked as he glanced over his shoulder to a street performer.   
  
The street performer looked something like a French harlequin. It was thin, tall, and lively, dancing and creating the gentlest moves and music. People who passed it by tossed coins into a felt black top hat that sat on the sidewalk near it.  
  
"Yes," Tori remarked proudly. She walked like a peacock strutting it's feathers. "We are very proud of our city. Come on, do you want to go have some... fun?"  
  
"Huh?" Vincent looked at Tori as she took his clawed arm. "I asked, 'Do you want to go have some fun?' Stop touring. There's so much to see, but, you HAVE to go to one of the nightclubs here. They really are the best in the world."  
  
"I don't know. Aren't there any parks or something? I'm really not in the mood to- I don't like crowded places anyway." Vincent defensively added, trying to distance himself from her. She only clutched his metallic arm tighter.   
  
"Stop being such a party-pooper. Come on, Vincent! It'll be fun! Me, you, and the dance floor. Come on. Us, 'monsters,' really know how to have fun, you know?"   
  
Before Vincent could rightly protest, he found himself being pulled and lead to a sort of public transportation station, where, soon enough, he was placed side by side with Tori on some sort of mass transit system.  
  
The battery operated machine took Tori, he, and nearly a hundred others to a darker area of the city; clearly it was 'the-other-side-of-the-tracks.' This darker area of the city looked older, dilapidated, and even dangerous.   
  
The mass transit machine looked somewhat like a train, only it traveled on rails that were up in the air, twisting and turning around the city and the skyscrapers smoothly. It stopped sporadically, letting on and off passengers.   
  
The deeper it went to the dark areas, the brighter it's front headlight turned. Them, before Vincent realized where he was, he and Tori were the only two left on the train.  
  
The train stopped. Vincent looked out the window. The train was in-front of a shack-like building. It's front was falling over a neon sign that read in flickering-pink-and-blue-letters, 'The 9th Babel.'   
  
"This is our stop." Tori said getting out of her seat and walking up the aisle in loud clicks.  
Vincent followed her.   
He made a decision. Never trust vampire women.  
  
Tori thanked the mass-transit driver with a wink. Vincent glanced at the driver as he walked down the dirty train steps; it was an older man with long, sharp red ears. He looked something like a troll.  
  
As the train's door closed with a hiss, he thought the driver said something to him (in a cackling, bloody laugh,) about 'having fun.' And, 'being careful out 'ere.' But, Vincent didn't quite catch what he said, exactly. He shuddered.   
  
"Come on, Vincent. It's not safe out here. This is what we call, 'the badlands' of the city. It's actually zoned off and illegal to be here. That was the only train that goes to and from here. It's not supposed to, but, the company that owns the mass-transit systems has been receiving bribes by the black market to go here at least twice a night." Tori took his arm and tried leading him into the tiered, sagging shack.  
Vincent wouldn't budge.  
"Why is this area of the city deserted and illegal?" As he spoke, a flock of bats flew by. They leapt from one part of the cavern ceiling to another in ear-splitting screeches and flutters.   
  
"Because! A couple years ago, the city got into a civil war. This was the war zone. There are a... a lot of... ghosts here. Come on, this place gives me the creeps. Everyone knows from this area, to area X, is haunted. Let's go inside. This is the only building here with life in it. It's a nightclub."  
  
Vincent was reluctantly lead from the dusty, black, dead cavern that smelt weakly of gunpowder and death, to the broken down shack.  
  
  
  
Tori smiled like a cat as she pushed open the unlocked door. Vincent, then, saw a set of fangs nested in-between two solid, thick lines of red lipstick.  
  
Meanwhile, deep in the basement of his lab at the youngest hours of the morning, Dr. Stygian was having success in making his Aeris/Jenova creation.  
The young babe, born out of a test tube, was growing rapidly due to the Jenova cells.  
She, like Sephiroth, would have mako injections to slow her growth rate when she becomes of age.  
She has bright green eyes, and long, brown hair.  
She smiles, much like Aeris.  
The reflections in her malachite emerald eyes flicker like Sephiroth.  
She looks to be about ten months old, now. In a day, she will be standing.  
  
Stygian is pleased, but worried. Who will she be most like?  
Hopefully, nurture will take it's course.  
She will be raised by Stygian himself.  
  
~  
  
  
"So, pray tell where are we going to find, this, Ray, Tseng?" Reno asked as Rude drove in silence.  
  
"I told you, by following the odd assortment of lighting. Look, it's moving North, now, looks like it's going to the Northern continent."  
  
"Anybody bring a jacket?" Elena asked.  
  
"I don't think it's even real lighting. I think that they are living beings from the Planet." Tseng sighed as they drove along the long, country road.  
Reno was counting the cows they passed. 2,765. He loathed the smell the made. He hated the country.  
  
"That's a theory. You know, Tseng, maybe your right. It sure doesn't act like a thunder storm. I hope were going in the right direction." Elena commented.  
  
"When we get to Juneon, we are going to get a boat and keep following the lighting. There is a city there, on the Northern continent, bet a billion gil that's where Ray is. Or in Juneon, doing what we are doing and following the lighting." Tseng glanced back into the back seat at Elena.  
  
Reno rolled his eyes once he saw Elena blush.  
  
Reno sighed, and leaned his arm out the window. He didn't care when he noticed his arm turn slightly red from the sunlight's exposure.  
As Elena and Tseng carried on about their theories, hopes, dreams, aspirations, and the crazy mission that they were on... to... find... what, exactly?  
Reno didn't know. Or care.  
He thought about the days as the Turks. How things have... changed?  
Tseng's back.  
Great, so what?  
Elena. His ex-girlfriend. His ex-co-worker... flirting with his ex-boss. Who used to go out with his ex-girlfriend.  
  
Reno lit a cigarette.  
Just going with the flow of life, eh, Reno?-He thought to himself.  
Where will life take you now? Looks like it's taking you BACK a bit.  
Sort of like Rude, there. Looks like he's taking it all well. Wonder what that ass-hole psycho is thinking, anyway.  
They used to be great pals, him and Reno.   
  
Reno thought back when Rude bought his first car on the Shin-Ra pay role. He spent everything on it. It was a silver Kinutse, the best sports car on the market. He remembered it had black leather seats, tinted windows, special-made sleek rims, a racing steering wheel, a spoiler, and a motor that hummed and flared so loudly, it made the heart palpitate. It went zero to sixty in under four seconds flat.  
God, it was a beautiful car.  
Then, Rude popped the trunk.  
  
It was filled to the gills was heavy armory. Guns, and lots of them.  
The look on Rude's face was priceless when Reno said, "Jesus fucking Christ, Rude, you're a PSYCHO!"  
  
Those were the days, thought Reno.  
Now, look at him. Rude is driving a Taxi. He goes by the name of Mohammed Al Bazaar.   
He wears a fez when he drives a Taxi, and still keeps his sunglasses on.  
  
What about himself? Reno lives in Midgar, the lower end of Section three. He owns a run-down bachelor apartment, a rusted bicycle, a static-filled radio, and a can of half-eaten refried beans and a jar of mustard.  
That's something to be proud of. Not really.  
Where did the good times go?  
Oh.  
That's right.  
They all went down hill after Cloud Strife and his friends defeated Sephiroth and killed president Rufus.  
Yeah, it was cool and all that he saved the world, but, he lost his job and his life-style because of it. At least Rude was employed somewhere.  
Reno wasn't.  
  
Reno wonders, as Rude drives on, and as Tseng and Elena keep yaking, where his father is now.  
Reno doesn't remember his mother, he assumed that she was dead, or divorced, or something. (Most likely divorced, he thought. Dad never talked about her.) He and dad always got along. Dad paid for college, and his first car. Dad was proud when he worked for Shin-Ra.  
Then, he sent dad that letter.  
  
Dear Dad,  
  
Hey, it's me. I'm not good at writing letters, so, bare with me here. I got that job at Shin-Ra. As a Turk. Remember what we talked about on the phone last week? I can't contact you anymore from this point on. I love you, dad.  
But, like you said, this is my life, and it's for the better.  
I'm sorry it has to be this way, but, it's Turk policy. No friends. No family.  
I don't even have a Social Security number anymore.  
I'll take care of myself. The company is a whole new life for me with great opportunities, if I can, I'll write. (But, I probably can't.)  
I love you dad, and I know you will always love me and be proud of me. Say hi- and bye- to Jared for me.  
  
With love, your son,  
  
Riguel Reno Mezzenger  
  
  
He never spoke to, or wrote- to dad after he became a Turk. No one was aloud to have contact with their family. They got used to being lonely. Reno blames the Turks for not being able to keep a stable relationship.  
Perhaps that was why they often date someone in the company. That was ok.  
He knew that Rude, Tseng, and Elena sent their families similar typed out letters.  
It was their un-spoken bond.  
  
Reno wonders if they speak to their families, now.  
  
'Real names,' Reno thought as he counted another twelve cows. 'Tseng Yang Fong, Elena Marie Young, and Rude... Rude? It was something like, Ruben... Ruben Hiesman. Something like that. Everyone always called him just, 'Rude.'  
  
Reno missed his father, and his younger brother.  
Maybe when he gets home, he'll call.  
  
~  
  
"...So when Nanko told me, I came out as soon as I could. I figured if I followed the lightening long enough, I'd find you, Cid. I... I was worried, about a friend, a collage. I'm just glad that you are safe." Red 13 said as he sat down.  
  
Cid nodded. Actually, he was a little touched.  
"Well, thanks, Red. I'ma... I'ma wonderin'-"  
"Yeah?" Red asked as he glanced at the silent, (for once,) Yuffie.  
  
"How the %$^%!^% do ya' get out of this god-for-saken' swamp!?" Cid exploded in a eruption of frustration.  
  
"Oh, here, I'll lead you guys out. I know the way I came in." Red 13 offered helpfully. A look of melting relief fell across Cid's dirty features.  
Yuffie shook her head. Although she was exhausted and lost, something deep inside of her chest, moved.  
"No! We can't leave just yet! We have to, we HAVE to, follow the lighting. I KNOW that it's going to bring something bad!"  
  
"Yuffie..." Cid started.  
"No. I know. Yuffie, I too, believe that it's a bad omen. But, be sensible. We are stuck in a swamp doing nothing. We must get out of here. I believe that it's heading North. But, the way out of here is East. We will leave here, get to an INN, and think of what to do from there." Red 13 stood and smiled.  
  
"Count me out of it. I want NUTHIN do do with ANYTHING! I just want to get out of here, and go HOME!" Cid snapped as he began to walk.  
Red 13 and Yuffie followed him.  
  
"Cid, I... have a question for you." Red looked up and asked as they headed East.  
"Look, I appreciate you comin' and helpin' me, Red, that was real decent of ya, but, I ain't getting' mixed up in no weird @$$ situations again, ok? I'm THROUGH with weird @$$ situations!"  
  
"No! Cid! That's not what I was going to ask! I was just wondering if you kept the black box on your Tiny Bronco." Yuffie looked down at Red as she was following his train of thought.  
  
"Well, sure, but, she's dead, you know, if we weren't in a swamp I'd give her a proper burial. She's over there." Cid pointed off towards the left.  
  
Red 13 dashed into the bushes, eager to hear what exactly went on as Cid was hit by the mysterious lighting creatures that accidentally escaped from Dr. Stygian's lab, deep in the Earth, several weeks ago. 


	9. IX

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
  
Stygian looked down at the girl. What to name her?  
His brother was always good with names, but they hadn't spoken in years. Stygian's brother was also a vampire, but a completely different lot. There were many, many kinds of vampiric creatures.   
There were those like Stygian, who started out as an ordinary vampire- but he had been around so long, 2,000 years, exactly, or there about- that his body began to adapt to the darkness, and began to turn the color of shadows.  
  
Then, there were damphires, who were only half, or part vampire.   
However, the wickedest of vampires did not drink blood. That was the kind of vampire Stygian's brother was. He was a step up the evolutionary ladder.   
  
Stygian's brother drank souls; and he was the color of an angel.  
As a matter of fact, Stygian brother's appearance was like that of an angel, because most of his existence was on that plane- the astral-plane- and he adapted to his surroundings. His skin was bleached white, as was his hair and eyes.  
  
His name was Leoht Riparius, a name that meant 'river of light.'  
  
Stygian bit his lips as the young girl totted about the laboratory floor.   
She was a curious child. She stopped, and gazed up into the empty florescent green tubes.  
They were emptied of the embryos since she became the one success.  
  
"Leoht was much better at naming others than myself." Stygian spoke to himself as he crossed his arms. Since the experiment, he had been thinking a lot about his brother. He glanced to the several test tubes across the room that held tissue samples of Aeris.  
Then, he looked to the ones that held samples of the Jenova remains.  
  
"Sephris?" Stygian said to himself.  
  
The child with the green eyes turned around, and looked at him.  
  
A silence passed.  
  
She looked at the black vampire with the same quiet, deep, reflective look that Sephiroth once had.  
But it was gentle, like Aeris.  
  
Then, the child exploded into a fit of gleeful laughter.  
Stygian crouched down to his knees, and held out his long, black arms. They were like two cables stretched out, ready to tie the child up in an embrace.  
  
"Are you hungry, Sephris?" He asked as she ran to him on stubby legs.  
"No, daddy." She mumbled in a high, young-voice.  
  
"You will become great someday, child." He said to her as he lifted the 8-day old girl off the ground.  
  
"Who is-Seff-hiss, daddy?" She was growing quickly. Her mind was like that of a two-or-three year old. It was hard to say.  
  
"That's your name, dear." He said as he carried her out of the lab.  
  
Sephris laughed as Stygian threw her into the air, and caught her carefully.   
Her lacy-white dress was like a gigantic, blooming flower as she tumbled up and down in the air.  
  
~  
  
Reno, Tseng, Elena, and Rude reached Junon at around eleven o'clock in the night.  
Reno's legs were asleep, and cramped. He really didn't want to talk or deal with either Tseng or Elena. He was sick of hearing their voices.  
  
As Elena stepped out of the Taxi, she stretched and yawned.  
Reno lit up a cigarette. He remembered the days when he was a Turk, and couldn't smoke- he had to stay in top physical condition.  
  
It didn't really matter anymore. He thought that he had a developing beer-belly. Rude, too, looked very soft around the edges.  
  
"So, where are you guys staying at, a hotel?" Tseng asked as he slapped the car door shut. Tseng bent backward, cracking his spine, then, he yawned.  
  
"I'm not made of money. I'll find somewhere." Reno muttered as he smothered the stub of his cigarette out on the sidewalk.  
  
"The ferry to Icicle Inn leaves tomorrow at seven am. I think it lets us off at Bone Village first, but, I'm not sure. But, we ARE heading north tomorrow, ok?" Tseng added matter-of-factly as he swept a lock of his long-loose hair aside.  
  
"Yeah. Whatever. See you two tomorrow." Reno waved as Tseng and Elena headed side-by-side into Junon's INN.  
  
Reno began to walk away down to Junon's seashore. Rude silently followed him several paces behind.  
  
Reno shoved his worn hands into his jeans pocket as he walked. He was well aware of Rude's following presence behind him.  
Junon was a harbor town, ran mostly by the Shin-Ra. There were several scattered homes; some of them vacationing cabins-where the residents only lived there some weeks out of the year.  
Other houses were houses built for families living on the military base.  
Junon, despite it being mostly industrial and military, had also a growing tourist population.  
  
Often people came to check out the military museum; it was exciting to see old boats and navel airships.   
Plus, the beach tended to be un-crowded.  
That was where Reno was headed, and Rude followed.  
  
The air smelt chilly. The misted crescent moon reflected its sliver white face on the glossy sea. The misty foam edges on the jagged shore licked the small cliffs.  
Reno sat down on a giant, gray slab of stone, and stared out into the water while holding his knees.  
Rude sat down beside him.  
  
The wind exhaled tiredly, as if the Earth itself was ready to fold up into the night, and give up until morning.  
It ruffled Reno's chestnut red hair.  
  
"Nice night. Eh? Reminds me of the days back as a Turk. Me and you, and Elena and Tseng. Not a lot has changed, has it?" Reno glanced at Rude, who took a great pause before he spoke.  
  
"...Like old days." Rude added quietly.  
  
Reno always felt that Rude was like a brother. Even if they hadn't spoken for years, when they were together, he felt nothing had changed.  
No one knew him better.  
There was an unspoken rampart between them.  
  
Reno knew Rude knew him well, but he never felt that it was vise versa. He knew Rude's past, he knew that Rude was picked on for having a bad stutter while he was young, and had an alcoholic, abusive father- however, no one could fully understand Rude.  
Rude was a psycho.  
He built pipe bombs in high school.  
He used to kill small animals for no reason.  
As he got older, he used to collect guns, knives, and a large assortment of brass knuckles.  
No one messed with Rude. No one WANTED to REALLY know Rude.  
  
...However, Rude wouldn't let anyone mess with Reno. Rude saw Reno was someone to take care of.  
  
(He wouldn't tell anyone that.)  
  
"Remember when you had that job as a bouncer at a strip club?" Reno turned his profile to Rude. It was as sharp and as pale as the crescent moon above.  
  
"Yeah...?" Rude grunted as he tried to make himself comfortable on the rocks.  
  
"Why don't you get a gig like that again? Why do you have to drive a taxi?" Reno ran his fingers across his own sandpaper chin.  
  
Rude, underneath his sunglasses, blinked, "Because, I want to drive a taxi."   
  
"You were a good bouncer, Rude." Reno turned and looked back at the moon. "I just don't want you to get caught up doin' a stupid gig like drivin' a taxi for the rest of your life. I think you can do much better, Rude. Your smart."  
  
Rude paused, and considered. Reno was concerned about him? Wow... And he seemed, sincere as he spoke, staring out into the sea. "Yeah. You too, R-Reno. H-You- C...C...can do suh-so much ... b-better your-huh-yourself." As Rude spoke, he stuttered uncontrollably. Reno was used to being patient, letting him spit out whatever he had to say.  
He knew that was why Rude spoke so little.  
He was terribly self-conscious about it.  
  
"Yeah. I know." Reno smiled gently.  
Flickering quietly was the small heard of lighting creatures on the horizon.  
They were heading for the Northern continent- heading home to Dr. Stygian's lab.  
  
"T...Thuh-that's whu-what Tseng's after, ... isn't it?" Rude turned to Reno, and asked in his soft-spoken stutter.  
  
"Yeah, I guess so. Crazy-ass mission, huh? Guess he had to find something to focus on since he avenged himself when he killed Reeve. He's got nuthin' better to do with his time now except chase lighting and Elena. And here, I think that Elena is just his way of getting back at me. Since, you know, he really liked Aeris. The dead chick. The Cetra. You know, he knew her since she was a little girl and he was just starting as a Turk."  
  
Rude smiled. It was sort of a silent laugh.  
Reno glanced back at him, then watched the lighting dance and shimmer in gold and white colors.  
It looked like birthday foil crinkling against a bruise-black sky.  
  
"I never liked him much. He always seemed so fake to me. Tseng. I can't figure out the guy, Rude. Him and Elena are perfect for each other." Reno babbled on bitterly. Rude was leaned against a rock, listening, and coaxing himself to sleep.  
  
"Me and Elena. Our relationship was really short. Then, I met Bunny. Elena was cold in bed, too, you know? A real ice-queen. Bunny wasn't. She was a stripper, and a much better replacement to Elena."  
  
"Ruh-Re-bound, Reno. Buh-Bunny was a re-bound chick." Rude muttered.  
  
"...What? Yeah. I know. I really cared about Elena. Once."  
  
---  
  
Lady luck smiled upon Tseng. Ray Romeo was asleep in the room beside him.  
Ray, too, was catching tomorrow's ferry to the North, tracking the lighting beasts.  
  
Ray was a entrepreneur, a scientist, and an insider to the Shin-Ra Corporation.  
He had been around since the Sephiroth/Jenova project involving professor Gast and Hojo.  
He had been tracking the beasts since their first sighting. He was an expert on monsters, monster behavior, and thousands of related subjects.  
  
There was probably no one more knowledgeable about classified subjects than he.  
  
He knew that the monsters had their own intelligent society, and considered the Cetra people as people of power and deserved respect.  
He also knew that Jenova was not only a Cetra, but a dead Cetra goddess that the monsters have collected the few remains of.  
He knew that there was a monster metropolis, and he suspected that it was somewhere on the Northern continent.  
But, he never knew where, EXACTLY it was. He believed that the lighting beasts would lead him to it.  
  
Ray rolled over on his bed. He grumbled and yawned in his sleep light a giant, hibernating bear.  
Ray was a fat, copper-skinned, bald, aging man, who enjoyed thick, smelly cigars, power and money.  
  
His gray, felt, cowboy hat was slumped against the hotel-room mirror. It too, slept well into the night.  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Dairy  
  
September 20, 2005  
  
Dear Diary,  
  
It has been an exhausting day. Mentally and emotionally.  
Apparently, Barret was in on it, too.  
Cloud wants to save our relationship, you see, from Johnny. Cloud knows me and Johnny are good, food friends.  
  
Cloud proposed to me the other day. I started crying.  
  
Diary, I didn't give him an answer. I ran into the bathroom instead, and puked out my guts. I was just way too emotional. He had a beautiful, ring, too. It was silver, and had an opal in the middle, and had swirls on the sides. It must have been really, really, expensive. He engraved my initials in the middle. Maybe that's what made me cry.  
  
Tifa Rosalynn Lockheart.   
  
Not, Isabell Valentine.  
  
I'm a little calmed down, though. Cloud and I talked all night after that. I told him that I wasn't IN LOVE with Johnny. He's just my friend. That's not the whole, truth, but, it made Cloud happy that I said so. I feel ok. Since Cloud proposed to me, I realize just how much he really loves me.  
I think I've been less confused lately. Yes, I love Johnny, but, Cloud is my boyfriend. Maybe my fiancée. I still haven't answered him.   
We made love that night, me and Cloud. We hadn't done that in a while. And it WASN'T sex. It was love-making.  
I've never done anything with Johnny. I don't think I want to, either. We kissed, once, but, he's not a good kisser.  
Johnny is a computer geek, and he keeps a lot of porn in his house. He's not my type. Deep down, I don't think he's a nice guy. (He is, after-all, Cid's son.) He's just a good friend that I care about.  
  
I've been thinking about Barret, too. Poor Barret. I wonder if he still thinks of me like he used to. I don't know, it's nice to be thought of, isn't it, Dairy?   
  
I really, love Cloud. I just don't know if I will say yes, yet.  
  
Love always,  
  
Tifa R. Lockheart (Isabell Valentine)  
  
  
~  
  
  
The Woman in the Red Dress  
(Harmonica. Blues beat. Vincent Valentine original. Unrecorded.)  
  
  
She's an evil, evil woman.  
I'm convinced she's the devil.  
  
Little red dress,  
Long golden hair in tress,  
  
She's an evil, evil woman.  
I'm convinced she's the devil.  
  
I met her when she was perched,  
On the barstool like a gargoyle.  
When I saw her I searched,  
For a way out.  
But with her pouty lips, my plans, man, she foil.  
For men everywhere, I pray, and I scream and I shout!  
  
She's an evil, evil woman,  
And... I'm convinced, she's the devil!  
  
  
We spent a night together,  
And she ain't innocent in bed.  
And I wished that it would last forever!  
But the love- it was all in my head.  
  
She's just an evil- evil woman!  
And oh, lord, I'm convinced, that she is the devil!  
  
She stole my heart,  
She stole my soul,  
She stole my wallet,  
And myself as a whole.  
  
She's an evil, evil woman,  
And I'm convinced, that she's the devil!  
  
Oh lord, how could you make such a creature,  
With perfect eyes, and innocent features,  
  
Oh... oh... lord! She is an evil, EVIL woman,  
And I am convinced. That she is.   
The devil.  
  
D-E-V-I-L  
That spells,  
Evil, evil...  
  
Woman!  
  
  
  
  
Thuds coursed up Vincent's veins as the sounds of pulsing music permeated up from the stairs. A light that was the color of mossy turquoise tunneled through the wooden hallway. Tori grabbed Vincent by his good hand, and pushed their way through the crowd.  
The music and smoke made Vincent's head spin in his surroundings.  
Honestly, he had never been to a club before.  
  
"Do you like the beat?" Tori spun around and ask. Behind her stood a centaur drinking wine and talking loudly to a dark elf, who stood beside a dancing halfling who was inhaling drugs from a balloon.   
"What?" Vincent raised his voice loudly. He couldn't hear her over the constant, ramming beat of the music.  
He felt it hammer alongside the bumps of his own heartbeat.  
  
"I SAID, 'do you like it?'" She giggled as she began to bounce to the music.  
Vincent simply watched her raise her arms and dance.  
  
"I don't dance!" Vincent tried to say. She may have heard him, but she ignored it. She continued to laugh and dance before him under the multi-colored strobe lights.  
  
Vincent looked around. There was silver colored lipstick upon the lips of in-humanly beautiful elves. Diamond-spaghetti-strapped shirts hung off of vampire men, who laughed euphorically and danced with leather clad, trendy-looking demons.   
Knots and clusters of creatures, some vaguely human, some not, were in drug-induced stupors and very high-highs. Some kissed and nearly had sex on the dance floor, all danced very closely with rubbing, touching, and hot passion.  
  
The closer Vincent observed, the more he felt uncomfortable, and the more he noticed that he was the only one not dancing or doing drugs.  
  
"Come on, Vincent, join the party!" Tori encouraged. She stepped closer to him and wrapped her arm about his neck.  
  
Vincent thought something, or someone, touched his ass. It didn't matter. Everyone was so close. There was smoke.   
The lights were flickering.  
Everything was so loud.  
It was hot.  
He couldn't breathe.  
Everyone seemed to be having such a good time.  
Everyone was laughing, or smiling, or kissing.  
  
Vincent KNEW that he didn't like it here.  
It wasn't real.  
  
Tori flickered her tongue in his ear.  
Vincent shuttered.  
  
"You know why I brought you here, Vincent?" Tori whispered in his ear.  
"What?" He asked.  
"There is human blood in you. I SMELL it. I WANT it. I want you, Vincent Valentine." Vincent pushed her away from him a little.   
He looked into her sweat glossed face.  
  
Spider strings of brown hair plastered itself to her warm skin. She smiled with bleach white fangs pressed against her apple red, fleshy lips.  
Her eyes were wide, and the strobe light flickered lighting in them.  
  
"I want to leave." Vincent said, clearly. He attempted to push her away. He had a sick feeling with her intentions, and mistrusted the flare in her eyes.  
She looked hungry.  
She looked like she longed to gut him, and eat his organs raw.  
She looked like she wanted to fuck him hard.  
  
He badly wanted to run, but it was so crowded...  
  
"You can't go anywhere. No one would care if I stripped you down, and had you right here right now. There is no where to hide, Vincent Valentine." She grabbed him by the back of his neck, and gouged her fangs into his throat. He winced, and wanted to scream out, but even if he did, the music was too loud for anyone to hear.  
  
People grinded against his back. He felt claustrophobic, and scared.  
Tori drank his blood. He felt faint.  
A boiling red tear slipped down his neck and to his chest.  
He wanted to speak, but he could not.  
  
And suddenly, as if he saw the light of the sun, as a white bulb flickered from a stage light above, Vincent thought he saw the sun.  
Was he dying? No...   
It didn't hurt anymore, as Tori drank on.  
He was calm. He had never been calm since he was given the ability to turn into chaos...  
But, the chaos beast was dying...  
His heart was quieting.  
  
But, he was calm. It actually felt... good!  
And the white light above, it was so bright...  
Much brighter than the sun, warmer, calm... beautiful.  
Vincent became obvious to his surroundings. He didn't know where he was...  
  
He just knew that he wanted to touch the bright ray of light above him, coming from the sky...  
So, this is what it's like to die.  
It's actually ok.  
It's not scary. He thought that it would have been something darker.  
  
Then, Tori lifted her wrist to her mouth after she pulled away from his neck.   
  
She lunged her fangs into her wrist, as so her blood spewed forth.  
She pressed it to Vincent's cooling lips.  
She held his limp body up with her free arm.  
"I'm so sorry I got carried away, Vincent. I didn't know that I drank that much from you. I didn't want to kill you. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I have to do this to you to keep you from really dying. I hope I'm doing this right. I never made a vampire before. Your blood was so good, so different, I couldn't stop."  
  
The white light was fading. Where was it going?! Come back! He wanted to touch it, hold it, become it! It was warm and comforting... And now the light was...  
Gone.  
  
What's this? It's dark. It's warm. It smells like life. It's hot. It tastes... like metal. Like salt.   
Vincent felt so thirsty.  
He needed some water.  
Someone get him some water!  
No, this is better than water, and someone was giving it to him.  
Vincent drank. He needed to drink. Bless that person who was giving him something better than water.  
  
He was feeling better.  
He heard his heart beat.  
No, that wasn't his heart.  
His heart stopped.  
This was... music.  
LOUD music.  
Vincent continued to drink from Tori's wrist.  
He could stand, now.  
  
Tori pulled her wrist away as soon as Vincent opened his red eyes.  
Things were fuzzy. Tori was fuzzy.  
Then, things were clear. Much clearer than they were before.  
Tori stood in front of him. The look on her face was sad. She was rubbing her wrist.  
  
"What's wrong? Did I pass out?" Vincent asked.  
Tori started to walk away, pushing people aside. Tears rolled down her cheeks.  
Vincent followed her out of the club.  
  
  
They headed up the rickety, wooden stairs to the front door of the shack-like building.  
Tori flung herself out.  
Vincent followed, and closed the door behind her.  
There was several people out on the front door near them, but they were not listening.  
One was smoking and talking loudly.  
  
"Vincent, god, I-I'm so sorry." Tori smeared her blood stained lips onto her red sweater. She turned away from him.  
"Sorry about...?" Vincent asked quizzically to her back.  
  
"Sorry about?! MY GOD, you are an IDIOT, Vincent Valentine, do you know what I just DID to you, you didn't pass out, you moron! I turned you into a vampire! I just KILLED you! Your dead!" Tori spun around and snapped. Wildfire spread to her huge eyes.  
  
The people on the porch glanced at them, and went silent.  
  
Vincent's mind went blank. He stared at her.  
She turned around once more, and coiled her milky arms around her breasts.  
  
"There's going to be stages." She mumbled to her arms. "First, your going to get really, really cold, but your going to get used to it, your always going to be cold, then, your going to want to fight it."  
"Fight... what?" He approached her, and stood next to her, looking out into the desolate, dark, abandoned cavern.  
  
"The Urge. Then, your going to feel yourself slowly change as things inside you continue to die. Both mental, and emotional. Your never going to be the same, Vincent. THAT'S why I'm sorry. You can't fight the Change, either. Your going to try to fight it, but, your old personality with the old life is going to die, and your going to start fresh, and new... and..." Tori squat down, and began to sob.  
  
Vincent stayed silent. It was true. He was feeling cold.  
His skin was turning paler.   
He looked at his good hand, as Tori continued to hold herself and sob on the porch.  
He turned it over.  
His fingernails looked like shiny flakes of pearl.  
He touched his face. It was smoother. His hair was softer and shinier.  
He felt...  
It was not chaos.  
He could no longer turn into chaos. Chaos was silent, it was dead, along with the old Valentine.  
  
He felt...  
He felt strong.  
  
He felt... so strong, like he could run, destroy, power, he could create. Life, un-life, everything was beautiful, so bright...   
He could rain down upon the city, like pellets of blood falling from the red sky. So much energy burning and coursing through his silent veins.  
  
"Don't feel sorry for me, Tori, for I am a reborn man." Vincent looked down at her. His autumn red eyes fell upon her like a dead leaf caught in a loose updraft.  
Tori stifled a sniff. She pushed her fingers across her cheek as she asked in a broken voice,  
"Wh-what?"   
  
A malevolent smirk swept over his features like a knife.  
"I said, don't feel sorry for me. I feel more like myself than I ever have. You fixed me. I am no longer a broken heart. You killed me only to bring me back, I THANK you..."  
  
"N... no, Vincent, you're a vampire."  
  
"I know." Vincent said. Then, he turned, and vanished swiftly into the haunted caverns, without taking the trains back to the city.  
Tori watched him leave. He was gone into the shadows before she could stop him.  
  
~  
  
Red pawed at the black box; he knew that the black box recorded everything as the plane went down.  
There was static.  
Red paused, and pushed it with his nose.  
  
The plane wreckage around him stunk like burnt plastic and smoky metal. Red sneezed into the air. He was careful with his footing; for the wreckage behind him was still smoldering. Glass and shards of plane stuck out like invisible needles on the ground.  
  
"MAYDAY! MAYDAY! I'm goin' down! Fzzzz...Shhht... Oh my G-Fzzz...! Beeeeezzz... blip, fzzzz... I could almost hear you, Aeris. Aeris! Speak up!"  
  
Red 13 listened closely to the voices on the black box of the Tiny Bronco. He could hear Cid's voice clearly, but, there were several other voices and sounds mixed in there...  
Was it the voices of the lighting creatures that brought Cid down in the first place?  
  
"Shhh! Ffzzz.. buzzz... BEEEP! Was it... Fzzz... Her? Cloud! MAYDAY, Can you read me?! I'm going ...Aeris. We want... Aeris back. DOWN! Fzzzz~! S-O-S! Do you copy! I am going to abort! I am gettin' my $#@%$^ Aeris... she died today. Cloud! Cloud! Can you hear me! I... fzzzttt. I need your held, CLOUD! UHG! AAAAAAaaaaaahhhhh! Sephiroth! Mother? Mother it's me! I've come to take you back, mother, together, we can have the Earth! Frrrrzzzttt... blip, beeeeep! Hell- Oh, my god, it's moving! Uhg. Fzt. PARACHUTE! MAYDAY We are Fzzzz.... Buzzzz..... Beep. Hello?"  
  
Red 13 took a step backward. Suddenly, the voices in the black box were clear.  
Red 13 glanced around. Cid and Yuffie were out collecting firewood before it got too dark in the swamp.  
Red swallowed.  
  
"Hello?" The voice in the black box asked again. Red blinked his golden eyes, and digested a huge gulp of air.  
  
"Yes?" Red replied. His snout was close to the black box. The smell of dying fire from the Tiny Bronco was overwhelming as a exhale of wind swept it over.  
  
"Who... Fzzzt... is this?" The breaking voice in the black box asked. Red could not tell who it was, weather it was man or woman.  
  
"I am Nanaki of the Gi tribe, who is this? How do you know Aeris?" Red 13 demanded forcefully.  
  
The voice in the black box began laughing hysterically. Red took another step backward. Something jammed into his back paw.  
Red hissed, and yelped loudly.  
A piece of glass wormed its way into his foot.  
  
The voice would not stop laughing. It had been nearly five minutes. Red wasn't sure if it would EVER stop. It was getting ridiculous.  
Red sat down, and began licking his paw.  
  
"Hey... you still there?" Suddenly, the laugh stopped. It asked the question very, very seriously.  
  
"Yeah?" Red looked up. The piece of glass was out, but, he still bled lightly.  
  
"Good. Wasn't sure if you left." The voice in the broken black box said.  
  
"What do you know about Aeris?" Red demanded once again.  
  
The voice in the black box cleared it's throat. Red glanced around, it was rapidly getting colder and darker in the swamp. Shadowy noises began to wake. Owls, frogs, and insects took up their instruments to play into the night.  
Black shapes began to twist and sharpen to jagged lines in the emerging moonlight.  
Red thought he could see his breath.  
  
"Aeris... Aeris... Gainsborough. The Cetra. Oh, we know LOTS and LOTS about her. Stuff you didn't know, stuff no one knew." The box said darkly.  
  
Red didn't trust the voice. It didn't sound human. It sounded wicked.  
It... frightened him, even.  
  
"Like... what?" Red asked smally.  
  
"Why should we tell you?" The box asked.  
  
"Who's this 'we?'" Red stood and approached the black box.  
  
"'We'. We are who we are, Aeris is going to live again. We are creating her." The voice began to chuckle. "Sephiroth and Aeris are one in the same, little kitty. We are genius. We are many. We cannot be stopped. We are... She is... coming. Aeris is coming back. So is Sephiroth, the great Sephiroth!!!" The box screamed so loudly, the speaker throbbed, and interference nearly deafened Red 13.  
  
Red leapt back, the high-pitched whine of interference flattened his ears to his head.  
  
Red laid down, and pressed his paws to his ears. His eyes were so slammed shut, they watered. The irritating knell of the huge, screeching noise repressed him. Deafened him. He couldn't move.  
  
Then, the black boxed was silenced.  
It exploded in a small electrical snap. Wires and small sparks of electricity hissed and erupted. A sliver of silver smoke rose in a ribbon to the treetops.  
  
Red approached the ruins of the small black box. A tiny flame and shards of black plastic and a speaker screen was all that was left.  
  
Red looked around, realizing how late it was.  
He dashed off into the swamp in a hurry to find Cid and Yuffie.  
He needed to tell them what he heard. 


	10. X

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
  
Tseng yawned, and stood.  
The ground was freezing. He curled his toes.  
He glanced around the tale hotel room painted with morning light. Where were his pants?   
He looked to the bed. Elena was still asleep. He wouldn't wake her until he was dressed and had hotel room coffee brewing.  
  
He found his pants in a sleeping jean blue heap on the floor. He smiled tiredly. He threw them off in the heat of passion the night before.  
Passion? He glanced back at Elena as he picked them up.  
Not really.  
It was just sex; pure and simple. He said that he would take her out if she'd agree to come, but, he realized something over the years- he wasn't looking for love.  
Love was just something to do when your bored and have nothing else in your life.  
You have to MAKE something to do in your life, and Tseng was done with revenge.  
Reeve, AKA Cait Sith, after all, was dead.  
The bastard.  
Reeve left him alone to die in the Temple of The Ancients.  
  
Funny, Tseng thought as he buttoned up his white shirt, after you have your revenge, it's like waking up after you die. You think, 'What am I going to do with my life, now?'  
Look for something ELSE to do was the answer.  
  
Actually, finding Ray and following the lighting beasts wasn't the most important thing to do in the world. Actually, it doesn't even matter. It's just something else to occupy his time with, and wasn't a 9-5 job.  
Tseng couldn't stand going back to an ordinary job, once he had a taste of Turk life- that's what this mission was all about.  
He needed to do important things.  
He needed to do BIG things, like find out what's at the bottom of this monster conspiracy.  
It's a Turk thing.  
It's a guy thing.  
It's a Tseng thing.  
  
Tseng lived in the streets for several years after the Temple collapse. He couldn't work if he WANTED to because of his paralyzed- numb arm. Then, he stopped feeling sorry for himself, and sought revenge on Reeve.  
  
Really, deep down, all Tseng really wanted back was his job as a Turk. Maybe, just maybe, searching out the monsters was his way of trying to get something back that was lost forever.  
  
Tseng sighed. He knew this whole thing was useless, and he was dragging other people down along with him. Rude, Reno, and Elena.   
"Really, Tseng," He said to himself as he began to comb his long back hair. "Your just a jobless bastard. Totally nuts, still doin' this shit. And, look, you ain't gettin' any younger, either." Tseng placed his comb down, and looked into the hotel-room mirror.  
  
Elena's shoulder slowly rose and fell with each sleeping breath in the mirror's background.  
Look into your own face, Tseng, what do you see?  
  
Be honest.  
  
And empty shell, Tseng, that's what I see.  
  
Tattered. Torn. Tiered. Aging.  
  
You ain't who you used to be.  
  
I know. That's my shadow. That's my burden I bear. I'm only a shadow of who I used to be, that shadow keeps following me. I used to have money, power, and...  
  
This wild goose chase is going nowhere. Why keep going?  
  
I don't want to be on the streets anymore. I don't want to become an ordinary Joe. No 9-5 job... please, no, I'm better than that. I was a TURK! A TURK!  
You hear me!? Tseng Fong of Shin-Ra!  
  
Tseng's narrow brown eyes swelled in clear, hot, salty liquids.  
  
He brushed it away, cleared his throat, and straitened his collar.   
  
He tried pulling the sleeve on his left arm strait. He wished that it would someday wake up, and be what and who he used to be. It wasn't supposed to end this way, crippled, and penniless. He wanted his arm back.  
He looked into the mirror once more.  
  
Killing Reeve didn't bring your arm back, did it?  
  
Tseng blinked.  
  
No, it didn't, but, it felt good.  
  
For the moment, anyway. I wonder if he had family.  
  
Why do you care? You killed lots of people as a Turk.  
  
Reeve just wasn't another guy- Reeve worked for Shin-Ra. Reeve had power, too, like me. Did... I betray Shin-Ra by killing him?  
  
No. You don't even WORK for Shin-Ra anymore. You didn't betray anybody, Tseng.  
  
Tseng pressed his palm against the mirror. The two hands touched. He lowered his weak head a moment. As he removed his hand from the icy glass, a ghost palm appeared upon the reflection of his face.   
Slowly, the hand evaporated.  
  
"God. I just want to... fucking... start over again. I wish I had money again. And a job, I... I don't want to be dead anymore."  
  
Elena sat up. She had been awake for a half hour now, lying there, listing to Tseng quietly talk to himself.  
  
"Tseng?" She said. Tseng turned around as she sat with her back against the headboard, and the sheet wrapped around her naked skin.  
  
"You heard me?" Tseng spun around, and looked at her.  
  
She spoke, while clutching the sheet around her chest. Her blonde, short hair was ruffled. Her face with yesterday's make-up was smeared around her puffy blue eyes.  
  
"Well, yeah, Tseng, uhm, I- know how you feel, you know, I was a Turk, too, and now I'm barely making ends meat, come and sit down, will ya?" Elena patted the bedspread. Tseng paused, then sat down on the beds corner.  
  
"Goin' on this mission doesn't make us Turks again, but we are going anyway. We know that. It's just for fun. Your taking it way too serious." She pushed a lock of her yellow hair behind her ears, and leaned forward, giving Tseng a playful, wise smile. "Having fun. Remember that? You know, I've grown up a lot in these last few years, and you know what I've learned? That, money isn't everything. Living is. Making it day-to-day is important."  
  
"I'm trying, Elena, I really am. But, I- NEED money to be happy. I keep comparing my life to the way it WAS to what it is NOW. It's not fair, it isn't as easy for me as it is for you. I can't 'just get over it.' I have NOTHING, and I can't STAND it." Tseng stood and nearly snarled as he spoke, but it was not towards her.   
  
"You got me." Elena said as she laid back down on the bed.  
  
Tseng glanced at her as he walked out of the hotel room.  
His glance was empty.  
It seemed to say,  
'Yeah, but, you mean nothing to me.'  
  
He slammed the door shut.  
  
Tseng sighed and rested his forehead upon the hotel hallway's wall.  
The walls had the most hideous, ancient looking wallpaper hugging them. In the corners, they were peeling with a brown and yellow banana splotches in curling dog ears.   
  
Under his feet, the rusty hotel rug seemed to have laid down and died several years ago.  
Tseng closed his eyes as his forehead rested upon the wall. He basked under the flickering, dull light. He just needed a moment to collect himself.  
It was a shitty, gray morning. He knew it was gray without even walking outside.  
He woke up feeling like pure shit.  
  
Something smelt familiar. It wasn't the dusty, musk smell of the hotel, either. It smelt like cigars.  
It was cigars. He couldn't quite place the brand. It was an expensive kind, though.  
  
"Fancy meetin' you 'ere, partner. Howdy. Didn't catch yur name before, I rememba ya' though. I never forget a face."  
  
Tseng lifted his head off of the wall. He sort of felt like just banging it really, really hard.  
  
The man before Tseng was a fat, framed, stout man in a gray cowboy hat. Around his middle, dividing his humpty-dumpty-egg-frame in half, was a thick brown belt and a huge, oval, belt-buckle squarely in the middle.  
Under the black, ring, shadow of his hat, was a lumpy, red face and two, tiny, bullet eyes.  
He had a mischievous smile, and a dark, manipulative twinkle to his eyes.  
  
"Do I know you?" Tseng asked without a hint of patience in his voice.  
  
"Surely ya do! Cigar?" The fat man offered as he plucked two long, brown, stogies from his inside suit pocket.  
  
"Uh, I guess." Tseng took one, why, he knew not. He supposed that he needed a smoke. The fat man placed his between his thin, pinkish lips, and took out a pure gold lighter. He lit Tseng's first.  
  
Then, Tseng remembered. This was Ray, the man they were looking for... How stupid he was for not recognizing him! How... ironic this was! This wasn't any old fat, old, cowboy, this was...  
  
"Ray Romeo! Yur that fella that shot that other fella in the dark! Can't forget a face! I bare no grudges, you prolly shot him with your own reasons!"   
Ray held out his thick, huge hand.  
Tseng glanced at it, and shook it while not leaving his locked stare.  
  
"Ray, I've been looking all over for you, we need your held in tracking down the lighting beasts." Tseng said in once quick sentence without taking a break.  
  
Ray laughed. His belly shook. He removed his cigar, and continued on one, long, heavy, gawfaw. He slapped his knee.  
His hilly, chubby face turned redder.  
Tseng was left to wonder just what was so damned funny.  
  
"Let's get outa this hallway and go have a drink, we will talk." Tseng pressed himself against the hallway wall, letting Ray lead the way. Everything about him seemed to be huge.  
  
They sat at the bar of the hotel. It was only 11 in the morning when Ray ordered his first beer.  
Tseng drank orange juice, normally, he would have had something like scotch, but, it was just too early for him. He was surprised that the bar was even open and serving.  
Anything for a buck, he guessed.  
  
  
"Now, you wanna know 'bout the lighin' beasts. Why do ya think I know anythin', and if I did, why would you think that I'd tell ya?" Ray asked bluntly as he sucked on his cigar. Under his huge, bulbous body, the bar stool vanished.   
Tseng wondered where he got a suit that size.   
  
"Well, I know that throughout the years, you are the one man behind the Shin-Ra who has been pulling the strings. I know you have billions of gil, and I also know that you're the foremost expert on monsters, and I know that the lighting in the past few weeks, isn't any ordinary storm. I KNEW you had to be found somewhere near it. I also know that your probably heading North."  
Tseng tried smoking his cigar, but found the smoke was really harsh on his throat.  
  
Ray paused as he lifted his sweating beer. Clearly, Ray seemed impressed with Tseng's knowledge of him.  
But, Ray kept a poker face, and lowered his deep, accented voice,  
"Whut's all this in it for ya, anyway, why do ya wanna know more? If I told ya anythin' about what's REALLY goin' on, there ain't no turnin' back, you know."  
  
Tseng nodded, "I know. And I WANT to know more." Tseng leaned in as he spoke seriously. His brown eyes were forever locked to the older, fat man.  
  
Ray sighed, and looked away, then he took a pull from his beer, and adjusted his large carriage on the bar stool.  
  
"Right, well, fine then, I'll tell ya. You pulled me leg. Fine. See, monsters, they got tissue from this dead girl, whose a Cetra, and tissue from Jenova, er, Sephiroth, really, I don't know, either or, doesn't matter, don't ask me how, and they are makin' a new creature outta this. The lightin' beasts was just an accident."  
  
"What? They are making something worse than Sephiroth, then!"  
  
"Don't interrupt me, boy, and keep your voice down, I ain't finished! Shin-Ra- Dante Julius, our stupid ass president, he don't know much 'bout what's goin' on. I do. I know the guy in charge of this project. I'm goin' to see him right now."  
  
"Why are you telling me this, anyway?" Tseng whispered suspiciously.  
  
Ray finished off his beer, and ordered another. He burped, then glanced at Tseng with a squinted eye,  
  
"Cuz, you ain't goin' to live for much longer, so, it don't matter WHAT I tell ya."  
  
Tseng didn't understand. He stared at Ray.  
  
"Your... you... think your going to kill me? Ha, I don't think so. I've lived on the streets, I know how to take care of my self, old man." Tseng snubbed out his cigar, and stood up.  
  
Ray shook his head, "You don't know what yur in for, boy. And I ain't finished tellin' ya what is going to happen."  
  
"Oh?" Tseng turned, interestedly, dabbing sarcasm into his tone.  
  
"The sun," Ray began.  
  
"Yeah, what about it?" Tseng asked, folding his good arm about his chest.  
  
Ray turned on his barstool, and tipped up his hat, then pointed to the ceiling with a short, stubby finger.  
  
"I got a feelin THAT'S what's gunna kill ya."  
  
"What do you mean? You know, your probably a bit off your rocker, Mr. Romeo."  
  
"Am I, kid? Yur the one whose gettin' involved with sumething much bigger than yurself, and you certainly don need t' be." Ray stood, leaving several dollars on the bar.   
The barstool seemed to have emerged from nowhere. It's shiny metal stem looked bent.  
  
"Stop being so cryptic! Just tell me what's what!" Tseng's nostrils flared with impatience. The empty hotel bar paid no heed at all to the two men, neither did it's tender.  
  
"Yur wanna know? Fine. I'll tell ya, kiddo, although, you prolly ain't much younger than me, I feel sorry for your immaturity, I surely do."  
  
Tseng fell silent as Elena's words echoed in his head. Elena thought that he needed to grow up, too. Maybe she was right. Maybe they were all right. Was his immaturity that obvious, or was Ray really that perceptive?  
  
"Awright. His name is Stygian, like the river Styx. He's a vampire. He's the one who moved Jenova from the Shin-Ra mansion basement, to his lab in the North continent. He then used da Jenova cells, and Aeris' cell tissue, and made a baby. Now, this whole thing is not without religious involvement." Ray paced about the bar, back and forth, as he spoke. His fingers were semi-tangled behind his back, but, his large, ball-shaped body made it impossible for his fingers to fully touch. "Monsters believe that Jenova was a dead-dormant Cetra goddess body. That means, Sephiroth REALLY WAS part god. That means, that since Sephiroth is part god, he really can't die. That means, that they are MAKING something that is part goddess- this is all because they believe, religiously, that they are making a savior, because Sephiroth was a failure."  
  
Tseng was trying to let this all soak in. He didn't fully understand.  
"Wait, are you saying Jenova isn't really dead, just dormant, because she's a goddess? Sephiroth took off her head. And... are you saying Sephiroth isn't dead?"  
  
Ray sighed, and stopped pacing, "Yep. Can't die, just, like, sort of dead, dormant, really. She won't move or talk or nuthin. But her cells are alive, she's a goddess, she's immortal." Ray slid his fingers into his jacket pocket for a cigar. "So's Sephiroth. But, he's... kinda like an angel. Anyway, just not human. MORE than human. Which leads to Sephris- the Aeris/Jenova creation. She and Sephiroth share the same mother, Jenova. They both will have her DNA. Brother and sister. She's already created and growin'. They serve donuts here?"   
Ray looked up from behind his cigar smoke. He slid his gold lighter away, and asked the barman for a donut.  
"What's that have to do with the sun and me dying?" Tseng asked impatiently.  
"I'm gettin' to that. Sephris is goin' to be mighty powerful. We only hope that she'll be usin' her powers for good- meaning, good for the human race. Little chance of THAT happinin', because the monsters will use her to get their power over us humans back. Monsters were here on Earth, along with Cetra, before us, you know. This is THEIR land we are usin' up. Word is, the monsters WANT Sephris to call down the sun with her power when she's of age, to burn us all to bits. Fire and brimstone, the whole nine yards. Sephiroth wasn't as strong as she will be. He could only call on meteor, and needed materia to do it. Sephris won't."  
"Where IS this lab? Where is this all happening?"  
"New Gomorra. Thanks, pal." Ray thanked the barman for the donut. "A little coffee, too, with the beer?"  
  
Tseng was engrossed in the story. Was this all true? It seemed so... far-fetched. The end of the world? Again?  
  
"Where's New Gomorra? Northern continent?"  
  
"Close. UNDER the Northern continent. Under the crater Sephiroth made. WAAAAAAYYYY far under there." Ray replied as he ate his donut.  
  
"Is this all true?" Tseng whispered intensely.  
  
  
"As true as the fat on my face, kiddo. I ain't makin' up stories. Not good at it. Fact is, I only lie when it comes to business and politics, not End of the World crap." Ray thanked the barman again when he returned with his coffee.  
  
"Now, kiddo, I gotta get goin'. I got a boat to catch. Gotta go to New Gomorra, if ya know what I mean." Ray finished his donut, and waddled to the door without touching his coffee or leaving a tip.  
  
"Wait!" Tseng called out. Worry sprinkled his voice and face.  
  
"What?" Ray stopped, and looked over his enormous shoulders.  
  
"End of the World? Are you serious?" The quiet, dark bar walls seemed to listen in on the heavy conversation.  
  
"Sure. Boy. It ain't nuthin' new. The World comes close to Endin' nearly every day. Don't you know anythin'? It's always dumb luck and stupidity of individuals- such as yourself- who have no idea what they are doin or what's going on- that save it. HAHAHAHA!" Suddenly, Ray bent over, crippling himself with laughter and slapping his knee. His red, thick face jiggled and flapped under the pressure of hilarity. Tseng was afraid that he would pop like a red balloon filling with too much air.   
Then, he stopped, and whisked away the few tears that tumbled down his features.  
Tseng stood still. He didn't find any of this at all funny.  
"...Sniff... Sorry, kiddo, I can't 'elp but laugh at the irony of it all. Some buck like Cloud er sumeone will save the world again. No doubt. Its how all stories end. The World never explodes, really."  
Then, Ray left.  
  
Tseng turned and ran as fast as he could, upstairs to wake Elena, and find Rude and Reno.  
  
The barman- who didn't listen to a word that passed, found himself annoyed with the untouched beer and coffee- and crumbs of a unpaid for donut on the bar counter.  
  
~  
  
"You have no reason to lie to us, Red. But, that's the weirdest thing I've ever heard!" Yuffie poked at the fire with a long twig, and shook like the leaves when the wind rattled them.  
  
"Puh! I heard nuthin' %#@!%$!@ weird when I was goin' down! I heard no voices, no nuthin'!" Cid crossed his ankles, passing a blank glance at Red.  
  
Red 13 stared into the small flames that crackled and flared before the three.  
  
"It's. True. I do not lie, Cid." Red spoke like a bird with it's wings clipped.  
No mess. Just plain, flat truth.  
  
"I know, Red, no one's doubtin' ya. It's... just, well, what's next?" Cid asked, trying to brighten himself.  
  
"I don't know about you, but, I'm going North. I HAVE to. If there is a risk of Sephiroth being back, I have to go for the sake and safety of my people at the Canyon." As Red turned away and paused in thought, the image of the beautiful woman from his dreams slowly seeped into his head like water to a dry sponge.   
He looked up at Yuffie and Cid after the moment of reflection.  
He said nothing about his vision to them. He was quite sure now that the vision that he told his wife about was a bad omen.  
  
"Me too! I'm going, too!" Yuffie smiled with years upon her young face.  
  
"Why, Yuffie?" Cid asked venomously.  
  
"Because..." She searched for a reason, "Vincent. Uhm. I'm going for him."  
  
"I don't get it. I thought you hated him." Cid asked. Red continued to say nothing.  
  
"I MISS him. I think he's in trouble. I LOST him, Cid. We were traveling together. I bet he's either gone home, or gone North. Call it a hunch, call it... women's intuition!"  
  
"Puh. Women." Cid spat.  
  
The fire before them sparkled on into the night.  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Dairy  
  
September 22, 2005  
  
Dear Dairy,  
  
I made reservations at a really nice restaurant for me and Cloud. I had news to tell him.  
I told him, 'Yes.'  
He gave me the ring. I knew that he had been holding onto it.  
I bought a really nice dress behind his back the day before we went to dinner. It was a short, black velvet, strappy dress.  
I wore the heels that I bought for a funeral several years ago, but never had a chance to wear again. He hugged me and kissed me and promised to be a good husband.  
And you know? I believe him. I also had other news for him, but, well, I don't think nows a good time to tell him. Maybe in a month.  
I don't know why I'm so sacred to tell him. I think I'm scared because I think HE'S going to be scared. I'm not sure if he's ready for it.  
Well, weather he is ready or not, it's in me.  
I don't feel it, but, I can tell.  
I took the test yesterday, it SAID I was. I was in denial before.  
See, I sort of knew that I was... because... I never told you this, but, I have been missing my period for some time now. I just thought it was stress, I didn't believe that I could be pregnant.  
  
I wonder if it's a boy or a girl. I have a FEELING that it's a boy...  
I wish it were a girl. I'd name her Isabell.  
  
Why am I so scared? Is it hormones? It's not like he will leave me. Maybe he will. I doubt it. I think I'm being stupid.  
It makes me feel so loved, something needs me, it's a living thing, swimming inside my skin, warm and safe- because I'm eating good and exercising. I want to be a great mom.   
  
When I touch my belly, I get this feeling that shakes and heats my whole body. I love it. I love it, whomever it is in me, and whatever it will be. I love it. I feel so good. I'm so happy, but I'm so scared. Were going to be ok. We have a lot of money, and live in a good neighborhood. I think we are ready for it.  
  
I just have to tell him. Johnny knows. Barret and Cloud don't.  
I wish MY mom were around. My step mom and my real mom... I need someone, a female, to talk to about this. I... I... even wish Aeris were around...  
  
Your Mommy to be,  
  
Tifa R. Lockheart  
(Isabell Valentine)  
  
~  
  
Sephris sighed as she looked into the mirror. Why was her dad fussing so much? Why was he bitching to her? She hated his black eyes. She could never tell if he was looking strait at her or not.  
Sephris hated her hair. It never did what she wanted, and she found a long gray hair lost in-between the rivers of reddish brown wavy locks. How could she be going gray, now? She's only 17!  
It seemed like only yesterday that she was 12.  
Life was easier then.  
  
In reality, Sephris was only several weeks old. But it was the Jenova cells in her that made her grow unusually fast. When her body ages a little more, Stygian will give her mako injections, much like the late Sephiroth, to slow her aging process. Stygian stated himself in her mind as her father.  
His coal colored face, and space black body was etched in her mind forever as the man who raised her. A vampire.  
  
Sephris looked much like Aeris, but had the eyes of Sephiroth.   
She didn't feel good today; she was a little depressed.  
Stygian knew that puberty would last a few more hours for her.   
That was why he locked her in his office. He wanted nothing to do with feverishly raging female hormones.  
He also left her with a box of tampons and a bottle of Midol.  
  
"Dad's such a prick. Where IS he? GOD I hate him! I think he abandoned me! Where is the radio!?" Sephris grunted out loud to herself.   
  
Sephris looked into the mirror, and picked at a black head. She felt so bored.   
  
"Sephris...?"  
  
She looked around. Something, someone, said her name.  
But there was no one there.  
The office was empty.  
  
Sephris stood. The office was small, and gray, and cramped with towers of stacked papers and files. There was a broken black radio in a filthy, dusty corner. It stared at her with two silent speaker eyes.  
  
"Sephris. Sephris. Seeeffffiiiirruuuhhhhissssss... hisss..." The voice sounded like mist and ocean waves. It was gentle like a old oak tree. It sounded as if it were in pain, like the cry of a dying Grandmother.  
  
Sephris turned in circles. Who was calling her? It seemed to come from nowhere, like the ripples in an echoing, disturbed pond.  
  
She was hesitant to answer. What if she were crazy. No.  
She wasn't crazy. She was hearing the voice.  
  
The office was dimly lit. The only light source was a soft, blue glow from a glowing stone on a iron black stand. It acted much like a floor lamp.  
It gave the room a hazy look, with many holes riddling ink black shadows in the corners.  
  
"What?" Sephris whispered. She clutched herself. Where was her father?!  
  
"Sephris. Listen to me. With your heart. Always listen. You are confused. You know me. You know Us. You always have. I am all around you."  
  
"Are you god?" Sephris asked naively.   
  
"I am. I am your ancestors. I am your parent. I am every living being's parent."  
  
Suddenly, Sephris felt calmer. The voice was like water, and she wanted to bathe in it. Sephris sat down on the floor of the room. She wanted to feel closer to the voice, and being close to the Earth made her feel that way. She wanted to listen.  
  
"Sephris. You can speak to me. We can speak. We are the Earth. We are your Mother, and your Father. You are gifted, Sephris. So was your mother before you."  
  
"My mom? You knew my mom?" Sephris' heart leapt into her head. She always wanted a mom...  
  
"Yes, darling, her name was Aeris, she too, could speak to Us. And we are she. I know it's hard, but We are Aeris. We are Jenova. I am the Earth. We are everyone that once was, and everything that will be. We are the Lifestream. We are Jenova, whose blood runs in your veins, we are human and we are Cetra."  
  
"The Earth, you're the Earth? I'm... special? Can everyone hear the Earth? Can everyone hear you, too? My mom could talk to you?" Sephris suddenly stood. She was excited, as if she had made a new, wonderful friend.  
She had so many questions.  
  
The Earth had all the time in the World to answer them.  
  
~  
  
Vincent had been feeding for hours.   
He was on top of the world; he knew humans were not cattle.  
He KNEW that what set them apart from him was the soul. He no longer had one, they all did.  
That's what set them apart from being cattle. Why they always won the wars.  
Things were certainly starting to make sense one he died.  
The chaos was gone too. That was a blessing. His body no longer ripped apart to sprout wings whenever he felt angry.  
Everything about the old Vincent was dead.  
  
Vincent left New Gomorra, without saying good-bye to Stygian.  
He would return, though, in a few days, once he was done praying on the street urchins of Midgar for blood.  
It just was so much fun.  
When the sun began to rise, he felt that his skin was on fire; as if it were a terrible, rapidly approaching sun burn.  
He swiftly retreated to Niblehiem with in-human speed, traveling in the shadows.  
He spent his first night as a vampire in his old coffin, for old times sake.  
Never had it felt so foreign before.  
  
  
As he slept, he wondered- he KNEW that he wasn't who he used to be... So, just who was he? He felt so young, he, like a teenager, didn't know who he was or what he wanted anymore.  
Everything seemed so new and fascinating, even little things like candle flames. It was as if he saw everything for the first time again. He knew that it wouldn't last. After all, vampires live forever, and eternity was a long time indeed.  
  
What would his old friends think of this? Cloud, Cid, Red... and... and...  
  
Yuffie.  
  
Oh, god, they had been getting so close, lately. Where was she, anyway? He betted that she was looking for him... Poor, poor Yuffie. What did he DO to her? Things couldn't be like they used to be. Impossible. They weren't the same species anymore. He could never look her in the eye again.  
It just... isn't the same anymore. He wasn't who he used to be. Vincent Valentine is dead.  
  
Vincent turned slightly in the soft, cushioned, violet coffin. He would sigh, but, he did not breathe any longer.  
The salty after-taste of blood still tolled in his mouth. It tasted like jasmine and roses to him. It just smelt, felt, and tasted so good. It was life, it was warm and flowed with watery memories...  
Like... like tears.  
  
Yuffie. No, ... wait... he didn't before... does he now, he wondered?  
No, of course not.  
Vampires didn't love, they couldn't.  
  
Everything seemed so different now. He felt different- about everything and everyone, including the people he once knew. Including Yuffie.  
He turned to his other side.  
He fought the urge to go and find her, just to see her again.  
It would be too weird, too awkward, what would she say?  
  
"Wow, Vincent you really changed. You died, and, oh! Look! There is something totally different about you! Did you get a haircut, uh, oh, no, you're a vampire!"  
  
He sighed. Vincent... who are you now? He wondered. Are you... evil? You just spent a whole night killing people- The thought in his head swirled and mixed with pounding hammers.  
He wished that he would stop thinking, and lying half awake, half dreaming.  
Never before had his coffin seemed so uncomfortable.  
  
Would you kill Yuffie, too?  
  
Vincent didn't know the answer to the question he asked himself. He just didn't know. 


	11. XI

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
  
Volume II of the 'Sun' series  
  
  
  
Tifa's Diary  
  
October 1, 2005  
  
Dear Diary,  
  
I HATE JOHNNY.  
  
Let me repeat that.  
  
I H-A-T-E Johnny Fucking Highwind!!!!  
  
  
Why? WHY, you're asking me?!  
Because.  
  
Let me tell you what he did to me a few days ago.  
He was saying that it was HIS baby.  
I never even slept with him!  
I could fucking kill him!  
I only KISSED him ONCE, a WHILE ago!  
  
He did it just to piss off Cloud, who, by the way, is giving me the cold shoulder now. It's been three days since he said a WORD to me in passing!  
I'm so SICK of this bullshit!  
I didn't want Cloud to find out I was pregnant like this!  
  
So, I'm having a sit down talk with Cloud this evening. If he wants to merry me, then, he will believe me that this is TOTALLY his baby.  
We can get over this. Me and Cloud need each other, and we trust and love each other.  
Jesus. Why is Johnny DOING this to me? I wonder what Barret thinks of all of this. I know Cloud told him.  
I bet Barret believes whatever Cloud says. I bet Cloud's just upset, I don't think that he actually thinks I slept with Johnny. Because I didn't!  
Ew!  
  
I'm... I'm tiered. I need something to eat. I miss Cloud.  
  
Yours truly,  
  
Tifa R. Lockheart, future Mom.  
  
~  
  
Tseng, Reno, Rude, Elena, and Ray set off on the morning ferry that went to Icicle Inn, due North. It left at seven in the morning. It was nearly four in the afternoon, now.  
The sun was going down early, because of their closeness to the tip of the world.  
Elena was freezing; she locked herself in her cabin, refusing to surrender any extra blankets.  
Reno and Rude were at the ships tiny bar. Ray frequented them a lot.  
Tseng had found a abandoned, heavy, winter jacket made of leather and fine fur. He wrapped himself up in it, then, hung out with some of the ships crew members.  
He was also found alone much of the time as well, reflecting.  
  
Tseng stood at the far end of the ship, watching the mountainous icebergs float away, and shrink in the distance.  
He also watched the cold wake of the ship leave long tracks in the sea.  
The wind bit his face, and held onto his skin with icy teeth.  
The tip of his nose ached. His fingers were long retreated into his sleeves as if they were five frightened turtles; the fingers at the end of his useless arm hung stupidly in the cold. They didn't matter to him, anyway.  
  
Tseng's thoughts floated much the same way the icebergs floated; lost, random, and bobbing up and down in monotonous redundancy.  
Such thoughts as:   
What am I doing?  
I want to change, but, I can't. I'm me, and that's all I CAN be...  
I CAN change, if I try...  
Who are you, Tseng? You don't even recognize yourself anymore...  
What am I doing?  
I want to change, but, I can't I'm m e a n d t h a t   
  
Tseng blinked.  
  
Soft petals of snow settled onto his eyelashes.  
They had become frozen there.  
Tseng sniffed. The air was like metal. The exhaling puffs before him were getting heavier and heavier.  
He was getting too cold; he desired finally, to get inside. They were nearly at the Northern continent, now.   
The hilly motions of the ship were getting to him as well. He disliked boats, but, he loved the sea. It had the emptiness, and unexplored wilderness that space had, but somehow, it also seemed more... maternal.  
The sea seemed like a gigantic house, one that every living being could call home.  
  
Tseng rubbed his thumb onto his fingers with his good hand. Then, he pushed it onto his mouth, and breathed hard upon them, warming his hand. They were so dry.  
Tseng headed for the cabin door. The ships walls were white, and in their corners they were spiked with lengthy, lumpy icicles.  
The moment Tseng's good hand pressed against the freezing knob, and burned him, the door burst open.  
Ray Romeo's huge, encompassing, black shadow fell upon Tseng's short, skinny, stature.  
  
"Eh, ya'll got a light?" Ray's enormous gaze fell upon Tseng like a sudden avalanche.  
"I thought you had a lighter." Tseng said as he squeezed beside Ray through the doorframe. The wind was picking up suddenly as they neared land. Walruses, whales, and seagulls greeted them.  
  
"Eh. I lent it out t' some young feller at the bar. Had red hair. Didn' give it back t' me." Ray said as he lumbered around, following Tseng back inside the cabin.  
  
"Well, then, no, I don't have a lighter. Ask Reno for it back." Tseng suggested as he pulled down his furry jacket hood. "Hey," Tseng looked up at him as he approached an empty table inside the mid-sized dining cabin of the ship.  
  
"Yeah?" Ray asked as he crammed the tip of an un-lit cigar between his small, yellowing, teeth.  
  
"Let me ask you something. Is there a chance that Sephiroth is still alive?"  
Tseng laid his good arm upon the wooden table as he asked.  
  
"Yur dumber than a bag of hammers!--Like I told ya before, yeah! There is a chance," As Ray answered, he gesticulated with his fat had that took his cigar out from his mouth.  
"Because, well, Sephiroth is part goddess. He can't really die, just be... dormant, like his mom, Jenova. Fact, there was a journalist in Kalm who claimed t' be frequented by the late general. 'Course, word is, now, I don' know if it's true, he got locked up in a nuthouse for claiming that. But..."  
  
"But, what?" Tseng asked intensely. His long brown eyes were plastered to the fat man's shadowed face.  
  
"But, they couldn't explain these tapes he had. It was an interview. He was interviewing Sephiroth. It WAS Sephiroth's voice on the tapes. I 'eard 'em. And, it was all after he was supposedly killed. Now, mind you, I ain't nobody's fool, and I KNOW that there are things unexplainable in this world. Only fools and morons believe only in things they can see."  
  
Tseng's eyes fell silent. He didn't want to admit that he thinks that doesn't believe in god. He never was given a reason to.  
  
"See, I know this stuff 'cuz I work with monsters. Some of them are magical, an don' use materia. I SEEN it! With me own two eyes! That's why I don' take this End of the World crap with Sephris none too lightly, Tseng."  
  
Tseng, again, remained silent. Then he turned, and looked out the window, watching large arms of white land float by. They were nearing the harbor.  
  
--  
  
Reno sat at the ships' bar, fingering the gold lighter that he forgot to return to Ray. Rude sat beside him, silently swigging a nameless beer in a brown bottle while minding only his own.  
There were several others on the ship, mostly, they were fishermen and archeologists heading for Bone Village.  
  
None of them paid even remote attention to Rude and Reno.  
  
Reno sighed as he stared at his distorted, stretched reflection on the golden surface.  
"You know, Rude, what the fuck are we supposed to be doing, anyway? Was their some great plan we missed? What the fuck's the point anymore? I'm not in love with anybody. Fuck. I don't even LIKE anybody, so, what's the point?"  
  
Rude paused and smacked his lips after a long pull from the brown, glass bottle.  
"Donno..." Rude answered as quietly as the fizz hissing in his beer bottle.  
  
"I mean, a lot of people say 'it's all about love,' don't they? Well, fuck me a new asshole, I've never been in love." Reno ranted as they sat under the dirty yellow barlight.  
  
Rude was very used to Reno's semi-drunk rants. They usually were about sex, love, and politics. Very rarely, but, sometimes they were about god- and how Reno hated that bastard.  
  
"What about... uh-about... Bunny?" Rude stuttered slightly. He, too, was a little tipsy. His stuttering were worse when he had been drinking.  
As a result, Rude never ranted.  
  
"Bunny? Psshhh... Shhhhyyyyit." Reno leaned back slightly on his barstool, and kissed the top of his beer bottle, sucking the marrow-gold liquid from it dry.  
Then, he leaned back in, hunched over, and slammed the empty bottle down.  
"Fuckit. Rude. I miss her. I miss Elena too. I miss what we had. I miss having a girlfriend and being in love."  
  
"We... we are all... luh-lonely, man. We are all lonely."  
  
"Fuckit, we don't need women! Puh! What are they good for?! They suck up your money, they manipulate the hell out of ya! Fuckit! I ain't dating! And... what the hell do they want from us, anyway! They expect everything to be PERFECT! They expect you to be perfect, and you know, were only human! GOD! I fucking hate women!" Reno passed a pair of bloodshot green eyes to Rude.  
  
"I bet your still all up on that Tifa, girl, eh? Still like her, hoss?" Reno asked.  
  
"Uh... kinda, man. I, uh, stuh-still like her, 'n all, buh-but, she... she'd never give me a chuh-chuh-fuckin' chance, man. N... Not for any amount of money in the world." Rude mumbled quietly. "'N don't be stupid, hoss, we.. nuh-need them. Women. At least, I fuckin' need the pussy." Rude grinned.  
  
"Yeah. Pussy." Reno repeated as he ordered another beer.  
  
"I... uh, really... ruh-really liked Tifa... at one point. Ruh-Really.. really liked her... Ruh-Reno."  
  
"Yeah. I know." Reno muttered soberly.  
  
~  
  
  
The worried Yuffie, the agitated Cid, and the pensive Red sat about a dying flame inside a tent at Bone Village.   
They sat beside and shared stories with several archeologists and anthropologists.   
  
It took them several days to travel from the swamp they were in, across the sea to the Northern continent.  
Cid was able to 'fly' the Tiny Bronco, (or rather, use it as a boat,) across the icy waters.  
As they went, Red played back the black box's recordings of Cid crashing the plane after it was hit by lighting.  
He wasn't able to get the strange voices he once heard play back to him; all that he heard was Cid's desperate SOS call.  
  
They were in the warmer areas of the Northern continent. It was nearly a hundred miles before they would reach the arctic circle, and hit hills of tundra and ice.  
Their small camp, the place that made up Bone Village, was a small oasis admist a sea of pine trees, deer, and snow rabbits.  
The archeological/anthropological group that made up the scientific community that accepted Red, Yuffie, and Cid with open arms were a small and strange bundle of people.   
They were into country/folk/and bluegrass music, listened to National Public Radio, abolished television in all it's forms, and most of them belonged to some sort of an environmental organization. They also ate purely organic foods, all of which Cid found repulsive.  
Red got along with them perfectly, and Yuffie found them perplexing.  
  
The three scientists they sat with inside the burlap tent were named Rose-Mary, Gary, and Owen. Gary and Rose were near Yuffie's age, and Owen was an older man, with a thin jaw lined with thick pepper black hair.  
Gary, too, had a thick beard, but it was red, and much of it was hidden behind a acoustic guitar that he played.  
  
Red continued to talk- explaining to the three scientists why they traveled to Bone Village.  
The scientists found his story fascinating.  
His voice was soft against the lonely howling of the winter wind outside their tent.   
Gary's guitar playing lulled Yuffie into dreams; she sat beside Rose wrapped up in three brown, wool, blankets.  
  
Cid smoked a cigarette within the shuddering tent. He wished he could go home. He was cold, hungry, irritated, and tiered. He added nothing to Red's re-telling of what happened.  
  
Owen, the older archeologist, offered Cid, Red, and Yuffie his chocobo for the rest of their journey.  
  
As Red and Owen talked about the white chocobo that they would borrow to reach New Gomorra (They could get there by cave, he said), Gary sang:  
  
Yesterday,  
We dance in the sun's ray.  
Today,  
Everything will be okay.  
Tomorrow,   
The weather forecasts  
Sorrow.  
  
  
January, February,   
The forecasts calls for  
Us all to be merry.  
  
March, April, May  
I wish I could say,  
I love you every day.  
  
Yesterday,  
We dance in the sun's ray,  
Today,  
Everything will be okay.  
Tomorrow,   
The weather forecasts  
Sorrow.  
  
June,  
It's time for a blue moon.  
I wish that death wouldn't part us,  
So soon.  
  
July, August, September,  
That's all that I can remember,  
Too bad the weather,  
Drifts in the air,  
Away, float away like a feather.  
  
Yesterday,  
We dance in the sun's ray.  
Today,  
Everything will be okay,  
Tomorrow,  
The weather forecasts   
Sorrow.  
  
October,  
Promise me now,  
Forever or never  
Infinity, eternity,  
Destiny,  
We were meant to be.  
  
November, December,  
Death can bring us through  
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow,  
Our past, our present, and our future,  
For me, and for you, it brings us to completeture.   
  
Yesterday,  
We dance in the sun's ray  
Today  
Everything will be okay,  
Tomorrow,  
The weather forecasts for  
Sorrow.  
  
Summer, spring, winter autumn,  
Forever and ever in a cycle,  
We head to the top, only to fall to the bottom.  
  
Well into the night, Yuffie found herself un-able to fall asleep. She was tiered to the point that her joints ached with exhaustion. Every pore in her body belched with cries for sleep.  
  
Everyone had talked themselves hoarse for hours.  
The scientists had told them everything they knew about New Gomorra: the monster city under the snow.   
The scientists had told them about the strange lighting, about the vampires that sometimes prayed upon their camp when there was no other humans to feed upon.  
They knew a little about Dr. Stygian coming around, searching for Aeris' remains. They also knew about another vampire- who was the sole monarch of New Gomorra. But, they did not know that vampire's name.   
  
They were all now long lulled into blank and heavy dreams.  
Cid and Owen were snoring.  
Red had a sort of snore, but it was more of a deep growling purr.  
Rose-Mary and Gary were stretched out, murmuring, and tossing.  
Even the small orange fire in the middle of their large tent was drowsy in a smoking, amber haze.  
  
Yuffie WANTED to sleep. She was cold. Tiered... but... couldn't bring herself to do it.  
  
Maybe if she exhausted herself, she thought, her body would force itself to rest.  
  
Yuffie stood up. Immediately, her body reacted to the cold. She shook like a dying leaf in the autumn wind.  
  
She stepped around Rose-Mary, Red, and Cid. She wanted to get out of the stuffy tent, and breathe some air.  
  
Yuffie pushed the heavy tent door flap open, and stepped out onto the dirt in her bare feet. Under the sliver of a pale moon, the shapes of the night moved.   
The huge skeleton that marked Bone Village was that of a long dead dragon that wandered away from New Gomorra several hundred years ago.  
That dragon skeleton, in fact, marked the beginning of human's understanding of monster society.  
Apparently, according to monster anthropologists, and some paleontologists, the dragon was outcasted and sent off to die in the forests where Bone Village is now, because of his disrespect to the then queen of New Gomorra.  
  
But it was mostly speculative.  
  
The huge dragon skeleton looked like huge jail bars, locking her in while casting stripped black shadows across the dirt.  
Around her, were several other burlap tents belonging to other sleeping scientists, and beyond that, was an unexplored forest.  
  
Some scientists say that the forest surrounding Bone Village is enchanted.  
(They say that because it is completely covered in smaller monsters. Some of these monsters ancestors bloodline goes back to the days when Cetra walked the Earth. Mostly, these creatures that live in the forest are harmless elves, faeries, pixies, and sprites.)  
  
It must have been very early in the dead morning, Yuffie thought, if NO ONE was awake and talking.  
  
Yuffie sat down in the dirt several feet away from her tent, and rubbed her arms. Her eyes wandered from the abandoned dragon skeleton (It was so enormous, that just it's skull protruded from the pine tree canopies,) to the tiny blinking in the black forest around her.  
She convinced herself that the small orbs of light, flashing in the forest, was nothing more that dozens of dancing lighting bugs.  
  
She sighed, and let her eyes drop to her tiny, dirty toes.  
  
She thought of her father, her little brother... that must be, how old now? Six? And of her mother she never knew... but, her mind continued to wander to Vincent. She didn't want to think of him.  
HE certainly wouldn't be thinking of HER.  
  
What was the point of wasting priceless breath on him, anyway? There were other boys, better boys, to have small crushes on. Why does she always fall for the ones she can't have?   
  
Boys are jerks. She hates them. Her last boyfriend was too... immature. Vincent was mature, but wouldn't give her the time of day. She wishes she fell for the nice boys. The ones that wouldn't treat her like dirt. Like Vincent.  
  
Yuffie folded her arms upon her knees. She had never felt so lonely before. She wished that she could go inside, and just sleep. But, she didn't feel like sleeping, now.  
Was she getting depressed, she asked herself? No. Just lonely. Such is the life of a materia hunter... Materia hunter? She hadn't really hunted for much materia, lately.  
  
Why couldn't she just get OVER him? He doesn't even LIKE her. Maybe that's why he was so irresistible. She got over Cloud much quicker, when she had a crush on him. What is it about him? He's cold. He's mean. He's so intellectual-high-and-mighty, he's insensitive, and cute... in a tall-dark-and-brooding sort of way... his hair is sooo long, and wavy, and shiny, and his eyes...  
  
It was his eyes, thought Yuffie, that did it. Those dark, mysterious eyes that hide behind a cloud of crimson and sadness.  
  
The sigh that seeped from her cold lips was more of a swoon. Vincent. Vincent Valentine, how I love you.  
  
Little did Yuffie realize, it was the same pair of eyes that made her melt under the guiltless sun, that was pressed to her head, far behind her.  
  
Vincent hid behind a mass of shapeless shubbery, watching her the way a wolf watches a rabbit.  
'Wait,' he formed the words without sound with his freezing, vampire-dead, waxy lips, 'just wait.'   
No.  
A voice inside of his chest said, 'Not her. Feed upon someone else. You don't NEED her... you just WANT her... because you know how she feels about you... That's why you have to kill her... because she likes you... Your not the old Vincent, whom wouldn't hurt a fly, he's dead. Kill her. Kill her now. For the fun of it. She nearly kissed you, once. How would it feel for her if she kissed those corpse cold lips of yours. Off with her! No. That's. Yuffie. Just turn, and walk away, Valentine. Just. Go.'  
  
Vincent stood.  
  
Yuffie snapped her head around. She thought it was a possum, or a wolf, moving in the pushes.  
  
She held her breath. A pair of red eyes reflected off the weak shuttering blue light of the moon. Yuffie couldn't tell what it was, off in the forest, but it was an animal. A tall one, by the height that was on the red eyes, staring at her.  
It wasn't human. Not at all.  
  
  
She stood, and picked up a stone near her. Maybe it was a monster. Yuffie swallowed, and as Vincent began to walk toward her, leaving the bushes and heading nearer to a tent, She threw the stone.  
  
Vincent lifted his metal arm, with a 'ting!' the rock hit it, deflecting from his smooth face.  
  
"Vincent?" She whispered rather loudly. "Is that YOU!?" She squinted to see in the darkness. Then, he existed the thick shadows of the forest and tents.  
"I thought you were a wolf, or a monster coming to attack me!" She dashed up to him with her two white twig arms flung out like a snowman's, and smashed her body into his in an embrace.  
  
But the moment she felt the iciness of his body, she pulled away.  
Normally, his breath was warm upon her neck, and his hugs were sweet and hot...  
But it was like hugging a inanimate object, like a lamp, or a pillow.  
There wasn't even emotion in it. Was he happy to see her? Was he sad? Was he...  
  
She looked into his inhuman features. He seemed paler than she remembered him. His eyes were the same color. Red. Beautiful ruby. But, they seemed glossed over, smoother, rounder, sharper. His skin, too... His cheeks, his small nose... his coral pink lips...  
  
"Hi." He said in an empty, soft voice.  
  
"Uh, hi. Uhm. You know..." She wanted to say, 'There is something totally different about you, is there something wrong?' The thought began to bubble in her mind, 'Was this even HIM? It has to be, right?' "I really missed you." She wound up saying after a half second of brief thought and hesitation.  
  
"I, uhm, wanted to see how you were. It was so hard finding you." Vincent began as he started to walk away from the scientists tents, and towards the towering dragon skeleton.  
  
"Yeah? How did you?" Yuffie said in her normal volume of voice once they edged the campsite.  
She hopped onto a small slap of stone peeking out from the sand.  
  
"Oh. Well. I-uhm. It was pure luck. I was heading North also." Vincent replied nonchalantly. He gnarled his long fingers behind his back, and walked stiffly. The thoughts that raced along the tracks of his mind, steamed and howled with the words, 'Does she know? Is that why she is acting so strangely? Does she know that I have become a vampire? What if she saw me... wanting to hunt her? Maybe I should tell her...?'  
  
"Were you?" She stopped, and looked at him. She stood like a castle stone wall, hovering above him. The slab of stone she stood on gave her height, almost intimidatingly so. Her dark blue eyes sparkled like heavenly stars pouring down upon him with a goddess' strength.  
Vincent swallowed. Did she know something he didn't? He cowered in her shadow slightly.  
  
"N...Yes. Yuffie! Sit down, I have something to tell you." Vincent reached up, and with his good hand, pushed her down upon her shoulder.  
She sat down on the rock.  
He continued to stand.  
  
How should he tell her?  
She was watching him pace.  
  
'Yuffie, I'm a vampire, and the real reason that I'm here was because I had a craving for your young, innocent, blood, and I really, really, wanted to kill you?' No, that wouldn't do. Not at ALL.  
  
Vincent rested his fingers under his chin a moment. They folded like a delicate fan of a stairway, each of his fingernails dripping down as the inside spiral of a conk shell.   
His two blood colored eyes shot at her.  
  
She stared back, unafraid.  
  
She knew something was totally off with him.  
  
"Yuffie. I. Am. ...No... less human than I ever was."  
  
"What?"  
  
"The old me is dead. I. Am... a vampire." As she spoke, he took the ends of his cape with his good hand, and hid most of his face behind it, like a theatrical red curtain.  
  
"Oh." Really, this wasn't a surprise... Yuffie thought. He slept in a coffin, anyway. She was surprised that he wasn't before. "How'd this happen?"  
  
This wasn't the reaction he expected. Not at all. She wasn't screaming, yelling, or running off. He stood there, staring at her staring at him.  
  
"Not long ago. Aren't you... frightened?" He dropped his cape. He felt like dropping his jaw, too.  
  
"Not any more frightened of you than I ever was. It just confirms your weirdness to me. I thought you had something to tell me like, 'I'm gay,' or, 'I like dressing in women's outfits...' No, wait, that's Cloud!" She giggled. "Well, no, you see, it just explains a lot about you, I guess. I don't know."  
  
"Oh." His desire to drink her blood and kill her only peaked for a moment, then fell. It was Yuffie. Only Yuffie. Like his little sister.  
  
Vincent sat down across from her.  
  
They talked, well into dawn.  
When the sun threatened to rise, Vincent was gone.  
  
~  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
~ 


	12. XII

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
Volume II of the Sun series  
  
  
  
Sephris knew. She knew what she could do.   
The Earth told her about the Cetra, her ancient bloodline passed down from the Aeris' cells that course through her veins.  
The Earth told her that Sephiroth tried to hurt it by casting meteor.  
The Earth also told Sephris, in it's silk soft voice, that because of the Jenova cells, (whom were also Sephiroth's, and now hers,) that Sephris was capable of doing worse damage than Sephiroth could ever even imagine.  
  
Sephiroth could call down meteor with the help of the black materia.  
  
Sephris could call down the sun, with no help from any materia at all.  
  
  
Sephris was confused. Stygian taught her magic, and encouraged her to learn of her destructive side, and that calling down the sun to destroy the human race, (because Sephiroth didn't,) was the most wonderful thing in the world.  
  
The Earth, whom spoke to her in a gentle, motherly wind like voice at night, told her that killing any living thing hurt her.  
  
  
Sephris had daily mako injections to slow down her growth rate. She now thought, acted, and looked like a normal 20 year old woman.  
Her magical powers were close to being at it's full potential.  
  
  
Sephris walked the streets of New Gomorra alone. All the time, she felt the beating heart of the Earth pulse in her ears, as if it were her own.   
Every day, she felt torn. Should she listen to her father, and use her magic to it's fullest, or the Earth, whom comforts her, like the mother she never had.  
  
She called the Earth, Aeris, because she didn't have a better name to give it.  
  
When Sephris was lonely, she spoke to Aeris, her mother.  
  
  
Sephris walked casually, with an unbuttoned jean jacket hanging off of her young frame. Her hair swung like a healthy, brunette tail behind her shoulders. Everyone once in a while, she would pull a silver strand from her head.   
She's seen photographs of Sephiroth. She knew that was where she got her gray hairs from. Stygian told her that he was gray most of his adult life.  
And, added her father, that was where she got her green eyes from. Sephiroth.  
  
Why didn't she have a normal family, she asked herself as she walked the downtown, twinkling streets of New Gomorra. Most families have a mother and a father, not a test tube. She supposed that she felt much like Sephiroth must have felt. He was created, not really born, too.  
A experiment? Was that all she was? No. Stygian, her vampire father- whom taught her all she knew- loved her, right?  
  
Sephris stopped, and purchased a newspaper at a newsstand on the street corner.  
She tucked it under her arm and beside her red leather purse.  
Kill humans? That's what Stygian said. He's not a bad father. He can't really be so wrong. Humans were filth.  
Aeris said he was wrong, though. Oh well.  
Sephris never met a human. Maybe they did stink, and were evil and selfish, and war-like.  
Sephris stopped, and waited to cross the street.   
It seemed like an eternity before the white 'walk' sign flashed on.  
  
Signs, thought Sephris. She needed a sign. Something to tell her what was right, so she wasn't so confused. She didn't feel like she could talk to her friends, she didn't want them to know that she heard voices.  
Her father knew, but, he had no comment. He always told her to just do what he said- because THAT was what was right.   
Maybe he was right. Maybe she should listen to a living being, instead of a voice in her head...  
  
Sephris sighed as she walked across the street. As she walked, she tipped and glanced over her blue-sunglasses-lenses to the drivers in the cars stopped beside her.  
  
There was no sun in New Gomorra; it was a city in a cavern beneath the Earth. But, sun-glasses made her look so sophisticated.  
  
The drivers in the vehicles, waiting for the sign to say 'go', watched her walk past them.  
  
She wished life had a green-for-go sign to it.  
  
Things would be so much simpler, thought Sephris, if something just TOLD us when to go.  
  
Sephris walked down the stone sidewalk with a suave swivel to her shapely hips. Who cares?-she thought. Who-really-really-cares! 'I don't!' she thought out loud.  
  
The cool sidewalks that her black, boot heels clapped upon had a natural star-like glitter to them. The neon blue and pink signs above her winked and reflected off of her baby-blue sunglass lenses. She felt sexy, as she strode on. She felt like she had power.  
But she had no idea where she was going.  
  
The faces she passed by on the street were as colorful as a rainbow. Some were mad. Some were worried, scared, happy, content, angry, drunk, schizophrenic, confused, bored, paranoid, high, or depressed. The ones that she noticed had no faces on at all.  
  
Then, Sephris turned the corner, and walked up the gem-like steps to her father's office. The spiral curls of her pony-tail bounced and jiggled as she pulled it's heavy door open.  
  
She had just gotten back from her college class, and now it was time for yet another lesson. Her father was the teacher, she, the student.  
It was another magic lesson. Today she was to learn HOW to call down the Sun.  
  
Why?   
  
Because.  
  
She could.  
  
~  
  
  
Tseng, Reno, Elena, Ray, and Rude glanced around. Bone Village seemed... different.   
The scientists were working, digging, researching, talking, and drinking coffee and cocoa. It was a cold afternoon.  
Tseng glanced to an older scientist.   
The older man had a peppery gray beard. He was talking to a younger man with a guitar slung around his shoulders. They were talking feverishly about a Cetra, and a girl named Yuffie.  
The name seemed familiar.   
  
Ray wandered off to question some of the research team.   
Elena wanted to follow Tseng, but a paleontologist male saw her, and tried his best to flirt.  
  
Reno and Rude just wandered about Bone Village, aimlessly. They talked just a little.  
Reno kicked over a large fragment of bone off of the large, petrified, dragon skeleton.  
  
The small sun in the Northern sky seemed shallow and small like a shiny copper penny. The noon light that washed over the freezing campground was pale, sticky, and white.  
Everything seemed to be bathing in glassy ice.  
The scientists were moving inhumanly slow, as if they were weighed down by the gray, cold day. Tseng kept his coat tightly zipped up to his chapped, cracking lips.  
  
"Hey," Tseng greeted as he approached Owen, the older scientist in the pepper beard.  
Owen turned to him.  
"Hey," Owen replied. Tseng noticed the question in his button black eyes; Owen was asking himself if Tseng was a scientist he did not recognize.  
  
"My friends and I were wondering if you could point us in the direction of New Gomorra. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I won't trouble you any further, and we will go." Tseng rubbed his pink capped nose.  
  
Own hesitated, and glanced about the Village. He saw who Tseng's friends were right away. They did not at all fit in.  
Ray was guffawing like cow infected with rabies, with two young archeologists- and was smoking a stinky cigar.  
  
Elena was dressed impeccably in a suit. There was a flock of dirty scientists around her in a thick, sand colored cluster.  
She looked like a frightened, caged animal.  
  
Reno and Rude were snooping about suspiciously inside the ribcage of the dragon skeleton.  
  
"Right," Owen said. The young scientist with him had a red beard, and a guitar. The young scientist's name was Gary. "There was a small band o' travelers just yesterday night searchin' for the same city. You wouldn't be with them at all, would you? We lent them our last chocobo. They were righty might nice folk. Me n' Gary, here, were just talkin' about them. Seems that the little gal with them was right pluck clean off by a vampire last night. They went out searchin' for her, but I don't reckon that she's alive now."  
  
Tseng was startled. He blinked. "What?"  
  
"Yep. There was a cat-man with them. And a older man. Goes by the name o' Cid Highwind. And the little girl, 'bout the same age as Gary, here, name was sothing like Yuffin-Yuffile? What was her name, Gary?"  
  
"Yuffie. She was cute." Gary said absently. "She had a nice rack."  
  
"Right, well, Cid and the cat-man took the chocobo, 'n went off lookin' for her, and New Gomorra. They left first thing this morn. If your quick, you will catch up with her, ya know?" Owen said while examining his blunt, black fingernails. They were encrusted with dirt.  
  
"Cid? Cid Highwind? Yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks for the information." Tseng turned distractedly. The moment before he yelled out to Rude and Reno, Owen placed his filthy, dry palm upon Tseng's shoulder.  
"The cave that goes to the Gomorra cavern is off yonder. It's dangerous as hell, kiddo. I doubt that those other guys will even make it through. Vampires. There be dragons."  
  
Tseng shrugged off the man's hand, and fixed his collar. "Yeah, thanks." He replied coldly.   
  
Owen and Gary watched Tseng walk off, rudely not heeding any warning.  
Perhaps it was the Turk blood in him, or the years of living on the street that made Tseng immune to fear and danger.  
  
It took only minutes for Tseng to gather Ray, Reno, Rude, and Elena. Soon, they set off walking. Ray was able to talk (or swindle, as it were. Ray was a smooth talker,) some of the scientists into giving him food, supplies, and a warm winter coat.   
The coat was far too small for his bear like stature. The buttons on it couldn't even dream of buttoning up around his boulder-like middle.  
  
Tseng lead the small party through a flat plane of snow. Along the distance, Reno could make out a small, stone colored, lonely lump.  
He couldn't stare at it for long, for the daylight on the blinding, white snow, made it seem as if he were staring into the sun.  
  
The scenery bored Elena, and even frightened her. She felt as if she were getting vertigo. Everything around them was a plane; and clean white.   
Where they going to the end of the world?   
Was this what it was like in heaven? Plainness. Utter plainness. Like walking onto a blank canvas. This was what god saw before she decided to create.  
Or maybe this was what it looked like after she destroyed everything.  
There was no life here.  
Only their tracks behind them, and the small lump on the horizon before them.  
They were going to the lump.  
  
Ray panted. He wasn't made for this. Not this much physical activity. Walking through the snow field was HARD. He was heavy, sweaty... and hot, so hot. He gave his jacket to Elena.  
He brought up the back, and barely kept up with the ex-Turks.  
He thought that he would have a heart-attack at any minute.  
That cave ahead, that was the cave that would bring them to New Gomorra. 'Just keep focused on the cavern,' Ray thought, 'It will pull you through.' Couldn't they stop and rest? Curse that cat-man and Cid for taking the only chocobo before them...!  
  
Rude wasn't thinking about the difficult trek through the snow. His hands were delved deep into his sunken pockets. Rude thought a little about Tifa. Just where was she? What city was she living in, now? Was she working?...  
Was the 7th Heaven back in business? Rude betted that she was living in Midgar-probably with Cloud.  
He wondered, if things had worked out way differently than they did, if they weren't set up to be enemies from the beginning, would she have talked to him?  
He liked his women to be strong, outspoken, good-looking, and kind. That was Tifa. He liked her fire.   
But Rude always thought of himself as a looser, no matter how successful he was. Look at him now, he thought. He's not a Turk anymore.  
Rude was a cab-driver.   
She would have never talked to him.  
  
He couldn't even talk right. He couldn't talk BACK to her even if she DID approach him.  
  
But she was so nice, maybe she would look past his stutter. That was why he liked her to begin with, she looked like an understanding woman.  
  
Rude thought of Tifa, and underneath his black sun-glasses, he smiled.  
His thoughts kept him warm.  
  
Reno cursed every aching, wet step he took in the snow. He counted down the minutes until they would arrive into the cave that went down to New Gomorra.  
Were they stopping at Icicle Inn, first? Wasn't the boat supposed to have stopped near there, first?  
Reno huffed. This breath shot out in a puffy cloud before his lips.   
Reno wished he never mixed himself up in this mess.  
  
Tseng kept the thought forward in his mind: They would soon be there. He would soon be there. They were almost there...  
To where? Where was he going?  
Where had he been? Where are you, Tseng Fong, he asked himself.  
Out in the middle of nowhere; your life is a wilderness.  
All around you is white, your life is a blank, open slate, to which anything can happen.  
Who do you love, Tseng, and where are you going?  
Is this what a mid-life-crisis feels like, he asked himself. No, it isn't a mid-life crisis, he said to himself, in the voice of his mind.  
  
His life hadn't begun yet. That's why.  
  
Out in the distance on a snowfield, Elena thought she heard two voices yelling out a name.  
It may have been her imagination.  
  
  
~  
  
Cid traveled on the back of the white chocobo. Red flanked it's feet. They were running, searching, yelling. Where was Yuffie?  
Last night, they woke, and she was vanished. None of the scientists had claimed to see her.  
Rose-Mary said that last night she heard two voices outside the tent, talking quietly. One sort of sounded like Yuffie's, but, it may have been a dream.  
"We should go back. This is all a bust, Red. We came out 'ere chasin' rainbows and off-colored dreams, an' all we got to show for it is a frozen corpse. A monster prolly ran off wit' her last night!" Cid glanced down at Red from the white chocobo he road.  
Red lifted his head as he ran, "Don't talk like that, Cid. She's a survivor, a materia hunter. She probably just ran off on her own. I'm sure she's fine and safe and will find US."  
Cid considered as he road on. The white chocobo's feathered became ruffled as a exhale of wind splashed over them.  
"Yeah, well, if that's the case-" Cid began, then he stopped a moment. "Then I don't want nuthin' to do with this anymore, and I wanna go home."  
  
Red didn't reply. Neither of them were truly paying attention to where they were going.  
  
"Red, it's cold. We don't know where we are going- Yuffie's gone. I see no reason t' continue, ya hear? I'm COLD, and I don' know what I'm fightin', 'n carrin' on for!" Cid took the reins of the chocobo with one hand, and with the other, he searched his pocket for a cigarette.   
  
Red stopped.   
  
Cid and the white chocobo went on for a few feet before Cid realized that Red was no longer running at his side. Cid then, halted the running white bird.  
  
"Cid, then I leave you here. I must carry on without you to the ends of the Earth, I'm afraid." The glow in Red's eyes was hot. The shooting white clouds from his cat-like nostrils repeatedly fogged his orange, snow encrusted snout.  
  
"What's with you?!" Cid screamed from atop of the white bird.  
  
"Cid, I had a vision. There was a woman, who was not a woman, she was... she was part goddess, like Jenova. She was in my vision. I know this to have something to do with the monsters acting up. There is... something evil coming. It is a bad omen, Cid, and I don't expect you to wholly understand, but, I'm a leader, and I have to protect my people!"  
  
As Cid sat upon the large, white bird in the vast and lonely snow-field, he watched as Red 13- AKA Nanaki, run off across the blinding horizon. He went, as he thought, to save the Earth.  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Dairy  
  
October 13, 2005  
  
Dear Tifa's Diary,  
  
Hi.  
  
You don't know me, not really. You have only heard things about me from Tifa. I'm Cloud Strife, Tifa's boyfriend. I found this tucked away under the mattress, as if she were a little schoolgirl.   
I read everything in it. Tifa doesn't know. I read everything about Barret, me, and Johnny. I think I had a right to, normally I wouldn't but considering the circumstances of her pregnancy, I was looking for the truth.  
According to her diary entries, she's innocent. It's my baby, not Johnny's, and this diary and her word is all the proof that I need.  
So, that's it.  
  
In case you were wondering, we are still together, I still love her, and I'm going to be the best dad to out baby that I can be.  
When she finds this, I hope she will not be mad at me for looking.  
But, we are going to be married, so, she will either find it cute and romantic, or intrusive, in which case, she will get over it.  
(Actually, I also hope that reading this will make me understand her better, which, it did.)  
  
Yours truly,  
  
Cloud Strife, Tifa's fiancée.   
  
  
~  
  
Vincent wiped the blood from his lips, and fell into deep, endless, despair.  
  
The darkness is thick in his heart. It clings to his soul, like heavy, rainy, tar. The blackness is sticky in his mind. It rings in his spirit, like rocky, weeping, mold.   
  
What have you done?  
  
Vincent clutched his metal claw, and staggered about the Shin-Ra mansion basement as if he were just shot in the head.  
  
What HAVE YOU DONE!?  
  
Vincent pulled at the metal claw. He wanted it off him, as if it were a dirty, infected, unholy object. The tips of the claw were covered in blood.  
He wanted it off. He wanted it gone. If he could, he would chew it off like an animal caught in a trap.  
  
He dragged himself to the door of his chamber. He couldn't stand being near his coffin, or near to the body that lay on the floor.  
He didn't even check for a pulse. He was too afraid that there wouldn't be one.  
  
A river of cold water streamed down his pale, vampire cheeks. He wanted it to stop, because it tickled his dead skin, but it wouldn't.  
  
What has he done?  
  
He couldn't forgive himself. Not this time. It was all right if he killed strangers, but, he could not kill someone who used to love him. That would be another sin.  
He already let Lucrecia die. He couldn't kill someone else completely innocent.  
  
Not even nightmares were enough punishment for what he had done. Even if he truly did not love her, like he loved Lucrecia, this was... in his own words...   
Inexcusable!  
  
His woes. His laments... his sadness, his madness...  
  
Vincent dashed into the shadows, and fell to his knees outside of the once locked wooden chamber that held his coffin. Bones lay there. They were bones of people he didn't know who were sent down there to rot.  
He wished that Cloud had never walked into his life.  
He wished Cloud had never set this monster free- he was doomed to be a monster, a creature of darkness and destruction.  
The world would have been a lot safer if he was never set free.  
He was sent down to rot. That was his destiny.   
He should have just been let down there to rot until the Earth crumbled, and fell into dust to float away in a river across the ocean of stars in the darkness...  
  
But, no.  
  
There is no heaven.  
  
And there is no hell.  
  
The end comes in fire and brimstone  
  
With the angel that fell.  
  
And the end comes when the sun condone,  
  
And everyone shall die, all the women and all the men.  
  
  
Vincent picked up a splintering piece of wood that lay upon the floor of the cavern hallway. Deep in the Shin-Ra mansion basement, shadows crept along the walls. This was where everything started, and so, this is where everything shall end.  
"I should have done this so long ago. I- I've always thought about suicide, everyday. But. I. I can't live like this, Gast. I can't live like a vampire, Hojo. I'm not a monster, I'm not. You may have made me one, maybe I was a monster even before you got to me, but deep down... deep down, I-I am human, I... And I've had to be a creature for so long, now. I was dead long before this. I was dead after my mother did what- what I WANT to do, now." Vincent paced. He had the stake in hand. He was nervous.  
"She, she did it differently. I come from a long line of cowards. She hung herself. I would, but I have no rope. I want... I AM... coming to see you, mother... and Lucrecia!"  
He also had so much to say that he could never say before. Why not speak now? He had nothing more to loose.  
"I- I LOVE YOU, Lucrecia. And I just want to SEE you again. To hold you, finally, in my arms. Fuck. I- I don't even have an arm here on Earth!" Vincent lifted his bad arm, and examined the blood on it's tips. It was dried now, and black. "I... I love you. I love you painfully. I love you... so sickly. Too much love is the opposite of despair. An overpowering love may consume you in the end. And it has consumed me, long ago, Lucrecia. You... never ... loved me back, I've lost a reason to live, so long ago. You were that reason, Lucrecia. You taught me to hate..."   
  
Vincent tossed his head back, lifting his face to where the sun would have been. He couldn't see the sun, not now. It would kill him.  
If the stake didn't work for some reason...  
  
  
There was always the all forgiving sun.  
  
Tears, cold, long fingered stretches of icy tears, fell into his vampire-black, thick, soft hair.  
  
"I've always wanted to- t-oh-god." Vincent wept. The stake dangled in-between his fingertips as he pushed his hand to his face to cry bitterly.  
"My power is as vast as the plains, my strength is that of mountains. Each wave that crashes upon the shore thunders like blood in my veins... What ... lies." He mumbled in-coherently.  
  
The violet walls that knew him so well throughout the years began to bend in, and listen to his cries.   
...There has been no man, nor beast to feel the strong despair that he felt, then.  
  
In his mind, he began to remember that night under the pink moon, when he and Yuffie spoke for hours.   
When the sun shuttered and began to brake into dawn, Yuffie asked if she could go with him- wherever he was going.  
He told her, no... But then, relented.   
They headed here, where their conversation turned to closeness. She asked to be kissed.  
He couldn't help himself. He remembered when she asked him to kiss her earlier, and did not- only to regret it.  
Then, his chaos of a different kind woke. He dug his metal claw into her shoulder to keep her from trying to escape. She screamed, but no one heard her.  
She weakened. She stopped screaming.  
Her body went limp, and her held her to keep her from falling- but did not stop.  
Then, he woke, and realized what he had done when her pulse in her neck fluttered.  
He set her down, and began to sob.  
  
  
"I should have killed myself so long ago. Look at the people I have hurt. Look at the people I killed. This is for them... not for me. But suicide, I know, is the most selfish thing to do, ever, so, I guess I lived a selfish life, and so, it's only fitting that I have a selfish death. I'm so sorry, Yuffie. Fuck, I'm sorry."   
  
The elongated shadow upon the wall reflected a thick, jagged piece of wood pierce into his heart.   
He grunted sharply, and from his chest, inky black, tar blood bloomed forth.  
It covered his good hand.  
  
The shadow fell back into the floor. He died directly across from his coffin, and across from Yuffie's drained body.  
  
On the screen in his mind, stilled photographs and damp memories fluttered past him, like doves in a windowsill.  
He remembered his sadness. He remembered his loves, and how he was loved.  
He remembered the things he wished to forget; he remembered the things on rainy, cold days.  
  
Then, it was white. As white as a snowfield.  
  
  
His long hair spider webbed the Earthy floor.  
Tendrils of his thick, muddy blood snaked around him.  
Delicately, a long, lonely groan pushed through his pale lips the last bubble of air pushed from his lungs.  
  
His wide-red eyes filmed over to a chalky color.  
His dead body stared blankly at the still cavern ceiling.  
  
Yuffie heard everything- she heard it all.  
She was not yet strong enough to stand, perhaps in a day or so.  
  
  
She accepted his apology. 


	13. XIII

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
Volume II of the Sun series  
  
  
  
  
Vincent's corpse was stiff. It seemed swollen and cold.  
It began to smell.  
  
Outside the silent mansion, millions of wet, crystal pellets began to fall from the sky.  
Yuffie could hear thousands of feet pattering on the rooftop, and sliding down the open window sills.   
  
  
She bent down, and with two, gentle fingertips, she shut his milky eyes.  
  
With her best efforts, she pulled out the stake in his heart. She wondered if it would rouse him alive.  
  
It did not.  
  
He wanted to be dead- he was dead inside so long ago.  
  
She remembered what he said to her one day;  
She asked, "Is that song, true, Vincent, are you looking for love?"  
He paused, and answered, no.  
  
The whole mansion around her seemed to weep. This was his home. It never seemed so empty before.  
  
It was now a home that nobody lived in.  
It's ghostly presence... seemed so lonely and cold. It's very walls seemed to peel with tears. She looked down at his body again, laying there, an inanimate thing. Like a rug, or a table.  
It once stood, breathed, laughed, and spoke... not now, not ever again.  
  
Yuffie pulled from her pocket a small piece of green materia.   
She bent down upon her knees, lowered her head, and caste 'Fire 2,' upon Vincent.  
  
His red cloaked splattered in dried blood ignited.  
Hungrily, it licked his clothes, spreading.  
  
Yuffie stood, and walked up the creaking, broken and dirty steps upstairs.  
  
Then, she walked out of the Shin-Ra mansion.  
  
She was crying.  
  
And the rain was cold.  
  
  
~  
  
  
Tseng stared at Red.  
  
Red stared at Tseng.  
  
No one spoke.  
  
Elena, Rude, Reno, and Ray stood behind Tseng, and the mouth of the cave that lead down to New Gomorra.  
  
Cid had already left for Rocket Town.  
  
Red traveled to the cave alone.  
  
"Get out of the way, you over-grown feline." Tseng finally said. He was loosing patience, and his frustration was blooming in pinks on his face.  
  
"I will not," Red huffed. Mushroom clouds of exhaling breath blossomed out of his mouth. "Until you tell me what you are doing alive, and following me with your Turk friends."  
  
"We AREN'T following you, kitty-kitty, we are just going down t-"  
  
"Shut up, Elena." Tseng snapped.  
  
"Yeah, you talk too much." Reno added callously.  
  
"S... sorry." She lowered her head and muttered. Ray rested his huge hand comfortingly upon her shoulder, but said nothing.  
  
"We don' we just go down there t'gether, we are obviously goin' for the same reasons, 'n I don' reckon about ya'll, I'm FREEZING, and I want t' go talk t' Dr. Stygian!" Ray pushed forward his bulbous body past Tseng and Red 13. He began to walk down the ice slicked cave that gradually tunneled down to the city beneath the snow.  
  
Tseng began to follow.  
  
So did Red, without adding a word.  
  
Silently, so did the chain of Elena, Rude, and Reno.  
  
  
Elena whispered to Rude as they walked, "Are we really going to stop the End of the World from happening again?"  
  
Rude didn't answer her. She didn't expect him to, either.  
  
--  
  
Dr. Stygian was becoming deeply, cracked and frustrated with his 'daughter,' Sephris.  
Why wasn't she doing it!  
She needed to call down the Sun, and destroy every last human on the planet that rightfully belonged to them, and the remaining Cetra.  
  
It was the 'voices,' that was topping her... this... Lifestream, Aeris, as Sephris calls her.  
  
"Sephris. This is what you were CREATED for!" Stygian clamped his black hands onto her arm.  
Sephris glared at her vampire father.  
  
"Dad, I don't think I CAN, I mean, I can, but, like, I shouldn't- Aeris keeps on whispering to me in the night, dad, I think I'm crazy... hearing these voices." Sephris pushed a lock of her long brown hair behind her shoulder, and looked at him with bright, sharp, emerald eyes.  
  
"Then don't listen." Stygian removed his bat-like hand from her arm.  
  
She rubbed her skin where his fingertips left marks.  
  
"And it's... like... Fuck you, dad! It's not FAIR that you keep telling me 'this is what I was CREATED for,' like I'm some sort of fucking SCIENCE experiment to you, and not your fucking daughter! Now I know how Sephiroth feels with professor Hojo!"  
Sephris stood and exploded into his blank face. Her words nearly jumped and spat at him.  
Stygian paused, and said nothing. He looked to his office dusty floor. He didn't want to be compared to professor Hojo... Hojo was brilliant, but... inhumane. That was his biggest downfall and folly.  
Stygian wanted to be greater than Hojo.  
  
"Sephris. I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't pressure you into doing something that you don't want to do." Stygian began to try to explain. He shoved a lock of his raven black hair behind his shirt collar.  
Then, he removed his silver rimmed, round spectacles from his lab coat pocket. He unfolded then, and places them upon his short, sharp, ebony colored nose.  
"I just want you to be happy. And... quite frankly,"   
Stygian turned to Sephris, whose arms were tightly wound about her chest.  
"I'm asking this favor from you to better the city, to better the world, for everyone. This isn't about me, or you, this is about being the savior that you were destined to me. This is for the greater good of our kind, daughter. THAT'S why we are asking you to destroy the humans. They are parasites, they are an infection on this planet. All they do is consume mako, destroying the very planet we are trying to save, Sephris. We are trying to save the planet."  
  
Sephris paused, and considered. Killing humans saves the planet. Humans are destroying the planet through pollution and technology, and they don't stop...  
So, call down the sun.  
It's easy.  
Just one giant swoop, they wouldn't feel any pain.  
  
"Oh... I... don't know, dad... uhm." Sephris stumbled, and lowered her arms.  
Stygian took her soft hands.  
"And I do love you, Sephris. You are not an experiment, you are my daughter, and you are beautiful. I'm proud of you, Sephris."  
  
Sephris smiled at her father.  
  
"I love you to, dad, and I'll do it, for you."   
  
A huge, ear splitting grimace shot across his ink colored face. His white teeth looked like a crescent moon in the midnight sky.  
"Excellent! Come, we will go to the laboratory, and begin. I'll call the other professors that have been dying to witness this for decades!"  
  
A slow sigh exhaled from her nose. All of her life she was taught that humans needed to be eradicated; she never even knew what one looked like.  
  
Sephris followed her excited father out of his office. Together, they marched down the tubular, steel-silver hallway. As they passed, the doors zipped open before them. There were a dull, blue lights flashing by them overhead as they swiftly strode.  
Then, they reached the last door. It obediently opened as they neared.  
  
They entered a circular, sterile room.  
On the far left was a gigantic map of the world on the wall, lit up by tiny bulbs. They areas with the huge red dots were major cities.  
Underneath the map, was a complicated, huge control panel, with billions of bulbs, buttons, levers, knobs and a black telephone.  
On the far right, was a simple wooden chair. Above it was something that looked like a steel bowl with tubes hanging out of it. Behind the chair was a large, red, metal container with the words: MAKO spelled out in spray painted white letters. All the tubes hooked up to it.  
Sephris sat down in the chair, and took the steel-bowl-like machine, and placed it upon her head. Stygian hooked up the tubes to her arms, then dashed to the side of the room with the lit0up map on the wall.  
  
Sephris closed her eyes, and concentrated on her breathing. She was nervous. She felt as if she were about to undergo a huge final exam. So many people were counting on her not to screw it up...  
  
Stygian hurriedly made phone calls, and talked in his official voice.  
"Yes, it's happening. Get my brother and Dr. Charron in here. No! Call the press, and we need some security officers outside the door. No, thanks Dora. We won't begin until everyone is here. Yes, I know. Yes, we have been waiting for this day for a long time. Operation Omega is underway. Yes, it's a happy day, indeed. Dora, transfer me to Dr. Lisa's office. Lisa? Hi. It's me. Yes, come on over. She's ready to go. It's a historic day indeed. No, it's not a failure. We won't have another Sephiroth on our hands, no Shin-Ra official even knows what's happening, let alone know what hits them. Yes, of course, uh huh, yeah. Ok. Bye. Hi? Hi! Vlad, it's me. Yeah, uh huh. Well, no, get your butt over here, now! Uh? Ok, bye."   
Stygian placed the phone down, and looked to his daughter.  
  
"Everyone is going crazy, Sephris. The press is having a field day, everyone wants in. Only seven of us will be present, though, Sephris. Sephris, sweetie?"  
  
Stygian paused.  
  
Sephris was as still as a stone.  
  
She sat in the chair across from him, with the shiny, metallic bowl with a million clear plastic tubes sticking out of it.  
  
Her closed eyes did not flutter.  
  
Stygian held his breath. The room was as silent as space.  
  
She didn't seem to be breathing at all. She seemed miles and miles away.  
  
  
She seemed pallid.  
  
"Sephris?! Sephris?!" Stygian ran to her, and slapped his hands upon her shoulders. He shook her violently.  
  
"Sephris, can you hear me?!"  
  
  
Sephris was in a room. No, it was not a room. It was space, but there were no stars, no oceans of dust, it was just black.  
There was no floor, there was no roof, there was no air, there was no water.  
Nothing.  
  
A woman stood in front of her. She was smiling.  
Sephris somehow knew who it was. It was the Earth, the Earth in the form of a human, like Mother Nature.   
Sephris called the woman; Aeris. They spoke many times. She has just never seen her before.  
Aeris was smiling.   
She was clean, and kind. She wore a long pink dress, a red jacket, and a bright, soft grin on her flower-petal lips.  
  
"Aeris?"  
"Sephris." Aeris outstretched her welcoming arms.  
  
As Sephris began to approach to her give Aeris a hug, Aeris fell forward.  
Aeris collapsed into Sephris' arms.  
  
"Aeris!" Sephris screamed. There was blood on both of their blouses.  
Sephris looked at her hand. Her hand was red, hot, and sticky. She was covered in blood.   
It was Aeris' blood. There was a wound in her stomach. Blood soaked through her pink, cotton dress.  
  
Sephris looked into the shadow nothingness above her.  
There was a man hanging in the black sky; only, he didn't seem like any man Sephris has ever seen. He was beautiful, like an angel.  
Upon his back was one, long, jagged white wing.  
His hair was long, and it was silver, like a steel liver flowing out into the dead air.  
His eyes were a pair of gravestones painted a lime green.  
He smiled, but his smile was evil.  
  
"Do it." He said in a voice that cracked like lighting. "Do what I couldn't do."  
  
"Sephris, Sephris! Look, she's coming back!"   
  
  
"Oh, Jesus, she scared us for a second!"  
  
  
"Oh, sweetheart, thank the gods you are ok! We thought you-" It was her father's voice. He sounded concerned.  
  
  
  
Sephris blinked. Everything was white. Then, it was hazy. Her father's face hung right above her. Behind him, was the shining of a round lamp. It looked like the sun.  
  
"Are you ready?" A red haired woman asked. Sephris had never seen her before.  
  
  
"Uh. It was the voice. The Lifestream spoke to me, dad... but... There was a new voice, there. Sephiroth..." Sephris mumbled. She didn't sound coherent.  
  
"Hush up, Sephris! Is everyone here!? Are you ready, sweetie?" Her father asked.  
  
"I guess." Sephris sat up in the chair. Around her was a horseshoe ring of people in white lab coats that she had never seen before.  
  
"Countdown!" A talk, tanned skin with a bald head and thick black glasses yelled. He held up his watch, and began to count loudly.  
Many of the doctors there held clipboards, anxiously.   
  
"10  
  
9  
  
8..."  
  
  
A woman pulled a bright green lever. Mako began to flow from the red tank, and into the tubes hooked up to Sephris' arms.  
  
~  
  
"I don't care WHO you are, you aren't aloud into this restricted area. We aren't even letting the press in. I don't even know how you GOT this far past security, Mr. Fong."  
  
Tseng stared impatiently into the Cyclops' eye. He was a huge, bald creature in a green uniform with a golden badge on his chest.  
  
Then, Ray pushed through past Tseng, and walked right up to the Cyclops.   
"'Ey, I'm a special friend of, uh, Stygian, the vampire, yeah. Howdy. My name's Ray, Ray Romeo, care for a cigar, my friend?"   
  
The Cyclops did not respond to Ray's fat, smelly, brown cigar that hung in front of him. Ray and the muscular security beast nearly stood eye level.  
Ray was a enormous man in every respect.  
Ray shoved the cigar back into his breast pocket without another word. Then, he pulled out a small, plastic clearance card.  
"Step aside." Ray ordered.  
  
The Cyclops saw the small, white card.  
He stepped aside.  
Then, Ray slid the card through a tiny machine with a hundred buttons that hung on the wall beside the locked door.  
The machine beeped.  
A green light went on.  
The Cyclops nodded, and Ray, Tseng, Elena, Reno, Rude, and Red walked into the room.  
  
As Red 13 entered, he saw a painfully beautiful creature, that was neither human or monster. She had to have been part goddess.  
Sephris was sitting in the chair, and had taken on her real form, much the same way Sephiroth took his real form when he turned into a one winged angel.  
  
She glittered like the heavens, all over. Her hair had turned sky blue, and her lips and eyes were like running water.  
Her body seemed almost deformedly elongated.  
She seemed to have been in a trance.  
  
She was the beautiful, evil omen in Red 13's vision.  
  
"7  
  
6  
  
  
5  
  
4."  
  
"Who are you?" Stygian pushed past the other scientists and addressed Tseng.  
  
"He's with me, Sty." Ray explained.  
  
Red stared hard at Sephris.  
  
Elena stayed in the back, standing halfway out of the laboratory door.  
  
Rude and Reno walked to the corner of the room to observe. They didn't care that much. Reno, however, found Sephris interesting, even in her odd state.  
  
"Well, yes, I see. I hope your not here to disrupt anything, Romeo." Stygian barked.  
  
"Well, no, we are here to observe this historic moment of the world, ending, Doc. What safer place to be than here?" Ray smirked, and handed Stygian a cigar.  
  
Stygian refused it.   
  
"Observe the world ending, Ray?! No, we have come to STOP you, vampire, and you evil ways!" Red broke his gawking, and growled at Stygian.  
  
"3  
  
2-"  
  
"Stop me, kitty! HA! We have been planing this for hundreds of years. Sephiroth was our failure. We aren't about to fail this time! We have created the most powerful entity on Earth! Half Cetra, half Jenova cells..."  
  
  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Dairy  
  
October 14, 2005  
  
Dear Diary,  
  
I found you with Cloud's handwriting in you. I read what he wrote just a few moment's ago. And... he knows all my secrets, now.   
I've never felt so violated.  
I've never been so happy, either.  
  
He knows me, now. He knows everything. Were going to be ok. He knows now, that the baby is his. I'm never going to speak to, or of, Johnny Highwind again.  
I want Barret back in my life, too, as a friend. I want Barret and Marlene to be OUR friend, Diary.  
  
And you know, I realized something, too. Yesterday was Vincent Valentine's birthday! Happy birthday, Vincent, my half brother, I love you, too! I'm going to give you a call and come visit you when I'm done writing in this diary. It's about time I go back to Niblehiem, anyway. I want to tell him the happy news that I never told him before. We are related, he does have family who cares about him! He always did!   
  
I am on top of the world, and nothing can bring me down. Tomorrow, Cloud promised me that we will go shopping together to find maternity clothes. It's a little early to go look at baby stuff, but me might do that too, while we are at it. I wonder if this villa will be enough room for our family.  
  
I've hurt so many people through my stupid actions throughout the past few months. But, I know what I did, and I know myself, now, and I am a happy, soon-to-be-wife-and-mother.  
I love Cloud. He loves me. I love Barret, he has always been there for me. Maybe Marlene will be our baby-sitter some day soon.  
  
  
It's... it's about noon-time. It's suddenly gotten so hot out. I'm looking at the thermometer, and we have air conditioning... But, it's so... hot. Oh, god! I'm looking out the window at the thermometer, and it's melted! It must be over 230 degrees Fahrenheit outside! It's never gotten so hot in Costa del Sol before! It's never been past 110! Where is Cloud? I'm worried. I hope he is not outside. He could get serious heatstroke, or even be cooked!  
The sun... it seems, so large in the sky today.  
I'm worried about the weather.  
  
Love,  
  
Tifa Lockheart 


	14. XIV

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
Volume II of the Sun series  
  
  
Tifa's Dairy  
  
October 14, 2005  
  
This is my second entry today, Dairy, I know, but, I'm worried. Cloud just got home. He's in the tub. He has second degree burns on his skin. The power went out. The sun, it's... cooking us, literally. I don't know what to do. We got a phone call from Barret. He said before the power went out, that on the news, they said the ice caps, Arctic and Antarctic, were suddenly melting. Ocean levels are swiftly rising. Is it the End of the World?  
Then, he said that he and Marlene are going to go hide out in the basement where it was cooler.  
Icicle Inn and Bone Village were swamped in a flash flood.  
And I'm so... HOT I feel sick. The villa feels like an OVEN!  
Things outside are melting. The flag pole is sticky. Bike tiers are melting into the pavement. Everything seems to be sagging. Spontaneous fires are... increasing. The drouts are getting bad, fast.  
I wonder how. I can't even think or write properly. I'm too... hot!  
Crops. What if crops are really bad this year?  
I need water...  
Everything outside looks like a Salvador Dali painting.  
Oh, I think I am going to throw up. In a heat wave like this, it's not good to be pregnant.  
I think that I may join Cloud in the tub.  
  
Very hot and bothered,  
  
Tifa Lockheart  
  
  
~  
  
The Shin-Ra mansion was cinder and ash.  
The Sun helped burn it to the ground.  
Now, it was a large hole in the ground. The basement, the laboratory, everything. Yuffie burned it in a pyre.  
  
Yuffie sat in the lake. She didn't care that her clothes were on. She wept a little, but it was too hot to weep.  
The water seemed to boil. She thought she saw some bubbles rise. The wrenching stench of dead fish made her head dizzy and hazy...  
She sat in the lake, in the shade.  
  
She wanted to brake down, and weep and sob and morn, but... it was so hot. It was to hot to think, let alone cry.  
She wanted to go find a cave somewhere, but she was too bogged down by the blasting, inferno weather, that she couldn't move from the spot she was in.  
  
She was in a forest, several miles outside of Niblehiem, moving on from the whole Vincent ordeal, when suddenly, around noon, it was as if a volcano erupted.  
The sun seemed odd... Yuffie was so thirsty, dead fish or not, she began to drink.  
  
~  
  
Nanaki's wife, Nanko, and her best friend, Dayte, watched the sun. Normally, in the sky, it was about the size of a nickel.   
Now, it was the size of a silver half dollar.  
Dayte sat beside his husband, and squeezed his hand. They were all afraid.  
"I hope... Nanaki knows what he is doing," Dayte panted. He took a swig of water.  
"His... dream. His vision, Dayte, I wonder if this was the ill omen his vision prophesied, that the sun god would come down, and bring his wrath down upon us in heat waves and drouts. Our crops have withered in under a half our." Nanko ran her copper colored arm across the sweat beads on her forehead.  
Dayte's husband glanced at Nanko with his dark, sharp eyes.  
"Nanaki dreamed of this?" He asked.  
"Itan, my husband, he... he is brave and wise, he will save us... And... I have faith in him, he dreamed of this omen as so he could have warning and save us all."  
  
Dayte, Itan, and Nanko held hands as they sat within the bar, looked out the window and into the sky. They prayed.  
  
Normally, the whole tribe in Cosmo Canyon would come together at a time like this, and dance a ritual rain dance.  
But even now, they thought it would be bad luck to be under the rays of the angry sun.  
And, they were too tiered and hot to even move.  
  
~  
  
"1."  
  
Tseng held his breath. He didn't know that he stopped breathing.  
  
Elena began to sob, and hold onto Tseng's arm for dear life.  
Tseng didn't know that she held onto him. It was his bad arm she sobbed into.  
  
Rude stared at the gigantic screen that held the map and many small, colored light-bulbs.  
One by one the light-bulbs near Midgar went black.  
  
  
Ray removed his hat, and pressed it to his fat chest. He lowered his head respectfully, as if he heard the silent screams several hundred miles above his head.  
  
The ring of scientists with clip-boards and white lab jackets were busy scribbling onto their paper. They were documenting everything.  
  
In the background, Red 13 was doing his best to fight the small security and Dr. Stygian.  
They were too much for him.  
Red 13 was muzzled shut.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The world was ending. It didn't happen suddenly.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It was slow.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
So slow.  
  
  
  
  
Heat wave. Heat stroke. Cancer.  
  
  
  
  
Starvation.  
  
  
  
The atmosphere was in flames. Holes, there was so many holes in the ozone now a days.  
  
  
  
Reno never had a chance to fall in love.  
  
  
  
Sephris was glowing. She was strapped into the chair, with so many silver tubes filled with mako sticking out of her. Reno stared at her. She was as beautiful as Red 13 described in his vision. Painfully beautiful. Too wonderful and too perfect to be human. She must have been a goddess.  
  
Reno couldn't take it anymore. He never been in love... he stared at her, his skin was painted in her blue-ish, hazy, aura.  
Reno, without realizing what he was doing, walked forward.  
The others saw him approach Sephris, but, he wasn't in a hurry. He didn't look like he was going to stop anything.  
  
And, before anyone realized what was going on, Reno bent in, and pressed his lips onto Sephris'.  
  
Sephris' eyes open. She lost concentration.  
Her glow began to fade, the more she fell back into reality.  
  
Swiftly, the Earth's gravitational pull yanked back into it's proper orbit. It felt like a heavy Earthquake or shake.  
There were no after shocks.  
  
One female scientist grabbed the wall for balance, then, she jot down what happened.  
  
"Oh, Christ," Reno whispered into Sephris' face. "I'm sorry, uhm, what's your name?"  
  
"Sephri-"  
  
"Sephris, what's going on, who- what-" Stygian spun around, and snarled at Reno. Red 13, who sat in a muzzle behind him, smirked.  
  
"Sorry dad, I can't do it, I can't concentrate. And humans are good, uhm, kissers..." Sephris pulled the metal bowl with hundreds of mako tubes on top of it, off of her head.  
  
"No, I won't stand for it! Hook it back up, go on!" Stygian threw his arms to the side in a fit of rage. His long black hair and hawk eyes darted about the room form scientist to scientist.  
  
The handful of scientists shrugged, and in a single file, existed the room. Tseng and Ray moved aside.  
"Sorry, Stygian, better luck next time. We don't have the kind of time to be wasting on anymore Sephiroth-like failures. Either destroy the humans, or don't destroy humans, don't waste anymore of our time." The female scientist with blonde hair spoke bluntly in a monotone voice.  
  
"But-but- Sephris ISN'T a failure, she CAN call down the sun! This is all your FRIENDS doing, Ray!" Stygian's bullet eyes snapped to the overweight, red faced cowboy, whom replaced his felt hat upon his bowling ball head.  
  
"Ain't it beautiful? Love saves the world. Bah. Rubbish, See ya, Doc, I didn' think that this was really tha end, anyhoo. I reckon that I didn' see no four horsemen anywhere. Better luck at killin' us next time, Sty."   
Ray pushed past Tseng and Elena.  
Anti-climactically, he walked away.  
There was no big bang.  
There was no bells or whistles. They just all walked away. Ray, Tseng, Elena, Rude, and the muzzled Red.  
  
It was just like Ray said.  
  
  
  
The world comes close to ending nearly every day.  
  
  
It's just stupid acts by un-assuming people who have no idea what they are doing that saves it. They were in the right place at the right time.  
Stupid people doing stupid things, like, a kiss.  
  
A kiss saved the world. Next time, it could have been a can opener.  
  
Or something equally as stupid and foolish.  
  
  
  
Reno was near the last to leave. He dragged his sleeve across his lips, looked at Sephris, and said, "I'll call you."   
He too, then, left.  
  
  
Sephris blushed, and meandered out on her own time.  
  
  
  
Dr. Stygian stood in the laboratory. The vein on his obsidian forehead, throbbed.  
The lights in the lab began to go out, one by one.  
  
The light directly above him, caste a single, triangular halo over him.  
  
  
  
  
  
He screamed at the top of his lungs, in bloody, red hot frustration.  
  
  
His throat burned. His lungs felt soft and saggy.  
  
  
When he ran out of air, he fell to his knees, and thumped his fist on the floor.  
  
  
Decades of work and research, went up in a kiss.  
  
  
  
  
  
He didn't have the patience or energy to try again in the same line of work. 


	15. XV

Under the Guiltless Sun  
  
Volume II of the Sun series  
  
  
  
  
When Nanaki reached home, there was a Grand Celebration. He was a hero.  
There was dancing, rockets, and festivities.  
Masks, colors, games, food, music, and love-making.  
  
The flowers, and the fun.  
  
Above the Cosmo Candle, the moon shined wide.  
  
Everyone let their hair hang loose, they let nothing confide.  
  
And early in the morning, they celebrated under the sun.  
  
~  
  
Tifa's Dairy  
  
October 15, 2005  
  
What odd weather! I think we also had an Earthquake! It's hot, but, not unbearably so. I tried getting a hold of Cid, to see if I could get a hold of Vincent, but, Sheila said that she was worried, and wasn't home yet. She said that he was hired by the Shin-Ra president, Dante Julius, to fly the Tiny Bronco up into the sky with a weather device on, to check on the weather.  
Well, I'm sure he's fine. I'm sure he was just held up because of the strange weather we have been having.  
She said that she would tell him that I called when he gets home.  
I wanted to tell everyone, Cloud and I set a date on when we are going to be married. June 12. I'm inviting everyone. I really wanted Vincent to be there, so I could give him the news. We are related. I'm sure he will be so happy. I'm also going to tell everyone that I'm pregnant, then. I think it's a boy, but, it's too early to tell. Women's intuition.   
The only person who knows the date of our wedding, is Barret- and of course, Cloud.   
Johnny doesn't know, because we are no longer are on speaking terms. We are better off, anyway.  
Well, that's all. All good news.  
  
  
Keeping in touch,  
  
Tifa Lockheart.  
  
~  
  
  
Tseng sat.  
  
It had taken him three days to return to Midgar. Every time he went someplace, he always wound up back in Midgar. Why? It wasn't a good city. Every road seems to lead to Midgar.  
  
He decided not to fight it anymore.  
  
  
He sat in a local park, with the paper in hand. He was opened to the classified section. Jobs, and apartments.  
Meanwhile, he was sleeping on Elena's sofa.  
He knew that he wore out his welcome. She never spoke much to him anymore. She just kept the front porch light on, and let him use the couch. That was it.  
Another guy kept coming around her apartment.  
She seemed to like him a lot. He brought flowers every time. He spoke softly, and, Tseng thought that he was writing her poetry.  
So what if she was seeing a new guy- Tseng thought. She was happy.  
He didn't even LOVE her, like this guy seems to, so, why does it bother him so much?  
Hey. She was happy.  
  
With a red marker, Tseng circled this job listing:  
  
WANTED- Work for Shin-Ra  
Good pay, decent hours.  
Must have previous experience with Shin-Ra  
Must be willing to do ANYTHING  
Call Bo at the Shin-Ra HQ  
1-555-867-5309  
  
The listing reminded him of a Turk ad. Turks often placed anonymous ads in the paper... Just to see who would reply.  
Perhaps... maybe, just maybe... this was one of them... Perhaps the Turks were returning... No. Impossible. They were disbanded...  
Tseng shook his head. It was worth a shot.  
  
  
~  
  
  
Rude returned to Midgar, and placed his notice in. He was quitting the Taxi cab business.  
  
Reno telephoned Rude once since the incident at New Gomorra happened.  
  
The phone rung off of it's dirty hook. No answering machine. No call back. No answer.  
  
A cockroach scuttled across Rude's abandoned tiled kitchen floor.  
  
Several eviction notices were posted onto Rude's front door- the rent wasn't paid for months.  
  
But, dusty white light slid in through his bedroom window. No one had been in Rude's apartment for what looked like- forever.  
  
  
The woman whom lived across from Rude said that he had been in once, and only once, before the eviction notices were posted. She was a woman in a bathrobe, hair curlers, and powder pink slippers.  
She claimed that he came in at around three am, and left with a suitcase.  
She said that she swore that he was wearing a red flannel shirt, jeans, and sunglasses.   
She said that he was carrying a set of motorcycle keys.  
On his brown suitcase, she claimed that she saw a bumper sticker that read: "Roadtrip."  
  
Then, he was gone, never to be seen or heard from again.  
Perhaps he went off to chase the wind.  
  
~  
  
  
Reno sat on his green Lay-Z-Boy chair with the stuffing clawing and crawling out. It was as if the pistachio green apostasy was giving birth to dirty butter yellow clouds.  
  
There was a smile on Reno's lips.  
  
Resting on his growing gut, was a bowl of popcorn smothered in E-Z-Squeeze-Cheeze- a form of highly-pressurized-aerosol substance every self-respecting bachelor was familiar with.   
There was a open, warm beer on the TV tray beside him.  
  
It was five in the morning.  
Reno's unwashed armpit sweat was soaking into his stained white-T-shirt. His sandpaper face was smudged in grease.   
  
His apartment smelt of flatulence, beer, and perspiration. His filmed over eyes reflected the technological blue glow of the television.  
  
  
He was watching a porno. Some pizza guy came over. There were three women, all taking a shower. One of them answered the door, and invited him in. Blah blah blah.  
Reno wasn't even paying remote attention.  
  
Reno lifted his hand, knocking the popcorn bowl over.  
He touched his lips, and smiled.  
  
~  
  
  
Yuffie lifted her hands.  
  
The ash slipped through her fingers and was swept away into the wind, and into the sea.  
  
It was ash from the Shin-Ra mansion.  
  
Yuffie sniffed.  
  
She wasn't sad. She simply felt numb.  
  
Yes. Numb. That was the right word. The was the exact right word.  
  
And you know what?-she thought to herself-he never even hurt her. It was all in vain. She was just shocked when it happen. She didn't hate him for it. It didn't even hurt. After a moment, she even enjoyed it. It was exciting, erotic, she trusted him, he wouldn't have hurt her, let alone killed her.  
He didn't even mean it. He was sorry, he was sorry and he didn't hurt her.  
  
  
It didn't matter, anyhow. It was all over.  
It... maybe... was for the better, even. He was sad for so long. And miserable. He was never happy.  
  
Yuffie sat down at the edge of the cliff.  
Far below her was a sprawl of trees, and sand-colored hills.]  
Around her, were patches of tiny, budding red flowers and patches of fern.  
The grass seemed toasted and gold. The sea was as clear and as blue as the sky...  
And the wind. Every time the wind combed his arms around her, it was as if she was being kissed by the Earth.  
  
A eagle road the wind waves. It soared like a huge, brown kite. Floating high and free.  
  
But, he's happy, now.  
He's finally at peace.  
  
He's never tasted peace before.  
  
Yuffie sniffed, and smiled. She pushed her tears away with her forearm. She loved him, not as a crush, but as a good-good friend. She loved him as deep as the sea glittering with the sun-reflecting dazzling stars before her.  
  
He was now in the Lifestream. He was now part of the Earth. He was, and forever, in her memories.  
  
"I... won't forget you, you know. Vincent."  
Yuffie plucked a small, red blossom from beside her, and tossed it off the cliff, letting the wind cradle it.  
  
He is happy now.  
  
  
  
  
  
And so is she.  
  
  
  
The End  
  
~PD  
  
Note from the author:  
Yeah I know what your guys are going to say. It's going to be either one of two things.  
1. That was as corny as hell. (Here is my reply to you for that: Fuck you.)  
2. The End!? (Here is my reply to you: No, there is one more Sun volume left.)  
  
I love Vincent. He's my favorite of all Final Fantasy characters, and I have played them all, including the game boy versions that I don't think you can get anymore. And... Vincent was my favorite of them all. It's sad to see him go, and I bet a million dollars that I'm the first author on FF.net to kill him, but, he was simply too sad to let live.   
I doubt that if Vincent were real, that he could live with himself as a vampire. Suicide was the only logical choice.  
Fact is, I'd rather him be dead and happy, then him be alive and miserable for thousands of un-dead years.  
Volume three is going to be a fun, wrap up volume. It's not going to be heavy on the drama or plot. It's just going to be a- see where all the characters are now sort of deal. It's going to be a short, and sweet sayonarra, tie-up-all-loose-ends fic.  
And then, like all stories:  
The End.  
  
They all lived happily ever after. 


End file.
